White Coat Ceremony 2016
Yesterday has been an important day of transition in the life of our medical students. During the third year of the course, the year in which the clinical training begins, they will prove themselves with respect to their choice: can I really be a doctor?
To symbolize this step, they have received a white coat and pronounced a modernized version of the hippocratic oath.
The White Coat Ceremony has been concluded by a final speech of the Rector, Prof. Montorsi.
Prof. Barajon, President of the Medical School:
“Today you will receive a white coat and this coat has many meanings, but I would like to dwell especially on the fact that this coat is a coat of compassion. You must wear it not only on your body, but also in your soul, in your heart and your mind.
Every time you approach another human being with this coat, do it from a perspective of compassion. Every time a patient will see you approaching with this coat, he will pour into you all his fears and hopes, all his expectations -not necessarily to be healed completely or partially, but mostly to be taken care of, to be considered a specific human being in a moment of need.
Remember what I told you two years ago, on your welcome day: medicine is an approach to the human being.
So never let a patient perceive in you a lack of compassion, an hastiness and a detachment that may make him feel that he is just an illness to you, and that you are in a personal fight with that illness, uncaring of his bearer.
Never approach a patient with self-importance and over-confidence, because he will always have something to teach you.
So today you will wear your white shining armor, wear it as a true knight would: with pride but also with humbleness, with honor, with honesty, with responsibility, with respect, with faith, with love and above all with compassion.
In a short while, you will be asked to read a modernized version of the hippocratic oath: because you are still students, but from this semester you will start to enter in the professional community. So start to reflect on the words of this oath and take the commitment from this day on to live up to it.“