White Coat Ceremony

The White Coat Ceremony is a symbolic event for first-year medical students as it gives them an opportunity to celebrate the completion of their basic science curriculum and the transition into clinical rotations. The program includes the presentation of a white coat with the student’s name embroidered on it. In the last couple of years, the White Coat Ceremony has attracted a “standing room only” crowd of parents, faculty and staff to celebrate the students’ achievements.

Profession of Values

We, the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine Class of 2012, profess our aspiration to preserve, protect, and defend the values that we attribute to this white coat.
Since the physician’s relationship with the patient is the core of the medical art, we will treat our patients to the utmost of our ability, with compassion and respect. We will strive to craft a healthy and open relationship with each patient, keeping in mind each patient’s unique background and remembering that while the good physician treats the disease, the great one treats the patient who has the disease. We pledge to pursue lives of learning and discovery within the medical science, aiming to achieve the best possible outcomes for our patients.

We pledge to our colleagues in medicine an equally high level of dedication as we pursue our common goals. Our relationships with fellow physicians and allied health care providers alike will be based on mutual respect and open communication. We will recognize our limitations and will accordingly seek advice and counsel from our colleagues. Similarly, we will aim to provide that same guidance as mentors and teachers.

Our responsibilities as physicians also extend further to include our respective communities – local, national and global. We recognize the universal right to the pursuit of health and pledge to act as stewards of that principle, pursuing our moral obligation to ameliorate health care disparities and to promote attitudes, behaviors and values beneficial to the public’s health. Moreover, we intend to remain active participants in the discourse shaping health care policy, acknowledging that medicine is a public service, undertaken in the nation’s service – and in the service of all nations.

Finally, though we pledge to serve selflessly, we also acknowledge the need to maintain balance amongst the various professional and personal responsibilities of our lives. We pledge to approach this challenge with humility, introspection, and a constant awareness of our limitations and capabilities.

We declare this statement on the 23rd of March, 2009, to our peers, educators, families, friends, the community of Baltimore, and the nation at large. It is an acknowledgment of our commitment to the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and its tradition of excellence.