This is my keynote address for the UAB PA Program White Coat Ceremony and revolves around my favorite physician of antiquity, Sir William Osler.

1. History of the
White Coat Ceremony

2. The Four Doctors by John Singer Sargent
1907

3. What is a “White Coat Ceremony”
Patrice Alves being cloaked by Dr. Sandra O. Gold
at the 1st White Coat Ceremony in 1993
Nolan Renner being cloaked by his wife, Kayla, at the
1st UAB PA ProgramWhite Coat Ceremony in 2012

4. The Early “Dark”Years

5. Massachusetts General Hospital
October 16, 1846

6. The Gross Clinic byThomas Eakins
1875

7. Click to edit Master title style
A Clinical Lesson at the Salpêtrière
by Andres Brouillet
1887
Dr. Joseph Babinski
Dr. Georges Gilles de la Tourette

8. The Anatomy Lesson by Rembrandt
1632
“…good old surgical stink…display of experience”

9. “…old blue frock…stiff and glazed with old blood!”
Lister operating in 1860’s

10. Candidus (lat.)

11. August 9th
1867
Aseptic
Technique
is Born

12. The Agnew Clinic byThomas Eakins
1889

13. OperatingTheatre at Jefferson
Medical College in Philadelphia, PA
1900

14. S
http://absurdist.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/2012.10.04-hierarchy.png

15. How Students ThinkThey Look and Feel
How Students Actually Look and Feel

16. Why do we have a “White Coat Ceremony”?
1. Recognize your accomplishments
2. Initiation to the professional brotherhood of medicine
3. Understand the significance of the white coat

17. “…but a life course, for which the
work of a few years under teachers
is but a preparation”

18. Why do we have a “White Coat Ceremony”?
1. Recognize your accomplishments
2. Initiation to the professional brotherhood of medicine
3. Understand the significance of the white coat

19. “…Look upon us as elder brothers
to whom you can come confidently
and fearlessly for advice in any
trouble or difficulty”

20. Why do we have a “White Coat Ceremony”?
1. Recognize your accomplishments
2. Initiation to the professional brotherhood of medicine
3. Understand the significance of the white coat

21. “The art of the practice of medicine is to
be learned only by experience;”
“…know that by
practice alone can you
become expert”

22. “Medicine is learned by the bedside
and not in the classroom”

23. What do you need to
practice at the bedside

24. Humanism

25. Professionalism

26. Medicine
“Medicine is the art of probability and science of uncertainty”
Humanism ProfessionalismArt Science

27. •
Professionalism Humanism
Physician Assistant

28. A New Tradition
From An Old Mentor

29. “The Latchkeyers”

30. “…the student feels that he
has joined a family whose
honor is his honor, whose
welfare is his own, and
whose interests should be
his first consideration”