OHSU SCHOOL OF MEDICINE
WHITE COAT CEREMONY
Dean Richardson’s Welcome Remarks
August 17, 2012
1 p.m., OHSU Auditorium
Portland, Oregon
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The White Coat: A Promise to Future Patients
Welcome everyone! I am pleased to see all of you here.
Our newest students and I met briefly during the start of their
orientation session earlier this week, but this is the first time I
have had the opportunity to welcome the families and friends of
our newest class.
Thank you all for being here today as we celebrate the OHSU
School of Medicine Class of 2016.
I can say without bias that all of our students are special, but this
class in particular has historical significance.
This year, we celebrate the 125th anniversary of the OHSU School
of Medicine. You are forever associated with this historical
milestone.
Since our humble beginnings in 1887, much has changed, and for
the better.
During the past 125 years, the OHSU School of Medicine has
evolved into one of the world’s leading academic health centers,
recognized throughout the world for our important contributions
to human health and well-being.
In 1887, we welcomed our first class of 15 students, all men, and
surprisingly, from the photos I have seen, almost all fifteen of
them had mustaches, and they were likely all from Oregon.
Your entering class this year is 132 students. And while I’m not
sure about the mustache count, I can tell you this about your
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class.
 74 of you are women, about 56 percent of the class.
 About 65 percent of you are from Oregon, with others from
around the country and world.
 All of you come to medical school with significant
experience in the health care sector, here in the US and
globally, along with experience in areas as diverse as
military service to journalism to accounting and agriculture.
You are an exceptional group of individuals; we are proud to have
you as our 125th entering class.
Back in 1887, the medical school was housed in a renovated
grocery store building in NW Portland – it’s long since been torn
down.
We have a few more buildings today – many of them built early
in the past century, connecting us to our storied past.
Rising now on the waterfront is a building that symbolizes the
promise of our future, a state-of-the-art new medical school –
the Collaborative Life Sciences Building. We are building this in
partnership with other universities in Oregon.
We’ll open the doors of our new medical school facility next year
and some of your education will take place there on the banks of
the beautiful Willamette River.
Our historic campus here on Marquam Hill, the tram, and the
sleek new buildings are an impressive sight to behold, but we are
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much more than buildings. We are people.
In 1887, we had a handful of volunteer faculty. Today, our faculty
numbers nearly 2,000 – some of the finest educators, physicians
and scientists you will find anywhere in the world.
For more than a century, our thousands and thousands of
graduates have cared for millions of patients and have made
extraordinary contributions that have helped to improve human
health.
Their accomplishments are more than the sum of excellence in
medicine and science. Our graduates are also leaders in their
communities, their country and the world. Oregon’s Governor
John Kitzhaber is an alumnus of our school.
Today, as you accept your first White Coat, you become part of
this illustrious and rich history, the community that is the OHSU
School of Medicine.
The White Coat ceremony is the formal way we welcome you
into our community and it marks the first step in the journey to
becoming a physician.
In just a little while, each of you will receive your first White Coat,
a symbol of our profession.
What does it mean to wear a White Coat? How will it change
you? It’s not a super-hero costume suddenly allowing you to leap
tall buildings, but it does have a type of power.
A few months ago, an interesting study led by Dr. Adam Galinsky
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in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology caught my eye.
The study looked at what they call “enclothed cognition” – in
other words, does what you wear affect the way you think or the
way you process information?
It caught my eye because they used the physician’s White Coat in
their experimental model. Like any good scientific investigation,
there were multiple experiments. I’ll share one of them with you.
74 undergraduate students were randomly assigned to one of
three options: wearing a physician’s White Coat, wearing a
painter’s white coat or simply seeing a physician’s white coat
draped over a chair.
After wearing or seeing a White Coat – physician or painter –
each student was given a standardized test for sustained
attention. The test was a proxy for being an attentive listener, an
attribute which is considered key to being a good physician.
The students who wore the physician’s White Coat, which by the
way was identical to the painter’s white coat, performed quite a
bit better on the tests. Those students who wore the painter’s
white coat or were in the group who had only looked at what
they were told was the physician’s White Coat did not perform
as well.
Multiple versions of this experiment were conducted, and the
results were consistent: the group that wore the physician’s
White Coat performed best in the subsequent tests.
What does this mean? Well, the investigators concluded that it
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was the actual wearing of the physician’s White Coat that
influenced psychological processes.
No one knows, at this point, if the cognitive effects are sustained
– or if they disappear once you take off the coat. (And to
maximize attention to my remarks, this suggests I should be
speaking after you get your White Coat, not before).
However, here is why I found this study interesting. If the White
Coat affects people – people who are not physicians or planning
to become physicians – just by putting it on, what is the reverse
impact?
What does the physician’s White Coat say about you to your
patients? To your friends? To your family?
You’ve all undoubtedly heard about the White Coat effect, how a
patient’s blood pressure may rise a bit just due to the
nervousness of having it measured.
That’s not what I am talking about.
One of our recent graduates said this to me after her White Coat
ceremony: “I didn't expect that patients would put their trust in
me from Day One.”
The White Coat changes you, and it changes how the world
perceives you. Patients will put their trust in you from Day One.
The White coat is a symbol – or more accurately it is a compact,
a promise – not just of the fact that you listen well, but of your
compassion for humanity, an outward sign of a profession in
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which you have chosen to pursue a life dedicated to improving
the health and well-being of people everywhere.
For a symbol to retain its power, it must be grounded in reality.
That reality is your commitment.
To me, this is what the White Coat ceremony marks today: the
moment when you formally enter into that compact between
you and your future patients.
Beginning today, just as every graduate has done since 1887, you
start on your own journey to earn the implicit trust that
accompanies the White Coat.
Whether your journey takes you to family medicine or
neurosurgery, no matter what the changes that inevitably will
occur in our health care system through the accelerating process
of reform, that pact will always remain core to what you will
become: A physician.
The promise implied by donning the White Coat today is what it
means to be a physician – no matter the context in which you
practice.
We at OHSU are privileged to be part of your education. We look
forward to learning with you – and from you – over the next four
years.
Welcome to the OHSU School of Medicine and to that compact.
Thank you.