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Johns Hopkins School of Medicine

M.D. Program

 
The Billings Dome against a clear blue sky, as seen from between some treetops.
 

Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
White Coat Ceremony

The School of Medicine and the Colleges Advisory Program actively support students in their transformational journey to becoming physicians, and the White Coat Ceremony marks an important milestone on this path. The presentation and cloaking of the white coat – a symbolic mantle of the medical profession – confers a commitment to the cherished values of being a physician: humanism, compassion, altruism, leadership, excellence and devotion to the well-being of others.

 

Class of 2026 White Coat Ceremony

The Class of 2026 White Coat Ceremony will take place on May 19, 2023 at 3pm.

Speaker Information

Watch the Livestream

Turner Auditorium at 720 Rutland Avenue
Parking is available in the Washington Street Garage
Map of Campus

 

Past Ceremonies

Statement of Values

The purpose of this Statement of Values is to outline principles that the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine Class of 2025 will abide by during their medical training and throughout their careers.

Read the Values

History of the White Coat

A collection of white coats on hangers.

Today, the long white laboratory coat is an international symbol of the biomedical community. A century ago, the medical service changed drastically when leading physicians were expected to be both researchers and scientists. White coats were adopted to emphasize cleanliness and professionalism. The white coat was first worn by a new generation of physician-scientists.

The scientific revolution in medicine was a founding principle of the Johns Hopkins Hospital. William Welch, the first Chief of Pathology at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, insisted that his trainees follow the scientific method in their research. At the same time, Sir William Osler, the first Physician-in-Chief, emphasized cleanliness in his historic textbook The Principles and Practice of Medicine.

Did You Know?

A graduate student receives his white coat.

The first white coat ceremony occurred in 1993 at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons. Medical students received a short white coat to emphasize their years of training. In recent years, a number of medical colleges around the world began holding coating ceremonies for their terminal degree candidates, including those working towards their Doctor of Philosophy degree. At the heart of these ceremonies is the recitation of a student oath, a pledge to uphold the same values of integrity, professionalism, and scholarship that inspired the white coat 100 years ago. The Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions use this occasion to mark the achievements of our doctoral candidates, and to charge them to remember the ideals upon which their scientific endeavors should stand.

Featured Guest Speaker Dr. Nathan Irvin

Dr. Irvin

Nathan Irvin is the assistant dean for medical student diversity, equity and inclusion and an assistant professor of emergency medicine (EM) at Johns Hopkins. He is also co-director of the Health Humanities at Hopkins EM initiative, which offers social justice and humanities-based programming to institution, community and national audiences; medical director of the Johns Hopkins Break the Cycle Violence Intervention Program; a faculty member at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Center for Mental Health and Addiction Policy; and an expert in social emergency medicine, a discipline that explores the impact of social forces on health. In this capacity, Irvin works on addressing many of the health and behavioral problems that affect people living in urban communities, including violence, trauma, HIV/AIDs and substance use disorder, and he is a staunch advocate for health equity in marginalized communities.

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