Annual White Coat Ceremony Welcomes 141 MD Students to the Profession of Medicine

As a physician, research scientist and educator, it was particularly fitting that new Boston University President Melissa Gilliam, MD, MPH, welcomed first-year medical students, their families and friends at the annual White Coat Ceremony held Aug. 5 on Talbot Green.

But Gilliam also pointed to increasing income inequality and health disparities that could undercut those medical and technological advances for some. She praised the Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine and its primary teaching affiliate Boston Medical Center for innovative approaches to address these challenges.

Gilliam also praised the accomplishments of BUMC Provost and School of Medicine Dean Karen Antman, MD, who announced in May that she would step down from those roles and return to the faculty when Gilliam names a successor.

“During her transformative 19-year tenure, she cultivated a culture of excellence that attracted talent from across the globe,” said Gilliam.

Organized by the Student Affairs Office, the White Coat Ceremony signifies the beginning of medical students’ journeys into the study, and ultimately the practice, of medicine. The white coat symbolizes professionalism, caring and trust; something medical students must earn from their patients. In a gesture marking the passage of knowledge from one generation to the next, faculty advisors helped students don their new coats for the first time.

“When you put on your white coat…you are now, already, a part of the profession,” said Antman, who described medicine as a renaissance profession that engages both heart and mind.

“You can’t learn it all from a book,” she said.

“Keep an open mind,” advised Angela Jackson, MD, associate dean of student affairs. “Medicine is a field where you will always be surprised.”

This year’s 176th entering class includes 141 students selected from more than 10,700 candidates and they hail from 30 states. They were born in 18 different countries and 86% speak a second language.

“All of you have met academic and personal challenges; all of you have sacrificed much and accomplished a great deal to reach this moment,” said Kristin Goodell, MD, associate dean of admissions.

For medical student Marcia-Ruth Ndege, medical school was never a sure thing. When she was 10, her mother – who had been raising three girls on her own but wanted a better future for them – left their home in Nairobi, Kenya, to work for the United Nations (UN) in Haiti. The plan was for her to continue to the U.S. and then send for them.

But an historic earthquake hit the island in 2010, killing 250,000 people, including 36 UN workers.

“Thankfully she was able to get in contact with us a few days later, and she was very much alive,” said Ndege. Soon after, her mother was hired to work at the UN in New York and the three girls took a long flight to reunite with her.

In the U.S., they moved frequently, seeking affordable housing and good schools. Ndege went to four different high schools. Despite the upheaval, she thrived academically. After graduating from New York State University Stony Brook, Ndege worked for three years in a surgical unit, monitoring patients’ nervous systems during surgery, before entering BU as a combined MD/PhD student.

After the White Coat Ceremony, Ndege gathered with her sisters and mother.

“I can certainly feel her pride,” said Ndege of her mother. “I don’t think she’s ever been prouder.”

Med student James Ehlers is from Taylorsville, Utah, a suburb of Salt Lake City. After graduating from the University of Utah with degrees in finance and mechanical engineering, he tried out both career options. As a mechanical engineer, Ehlers, a devout Mormon, worked first on rockets intended for space exploration, but was reassigned to intercontinental ballistic missiles that could carry nuclear warheads.

Ultimately, that didn’t fit with his values. Volunteer work at hospitals helped him decide on a medical career.

“BU had the best pre-professional program (MS in Medical Sciences), but I also love the mission of Boston Medical Center,” he said.

Medical student Teresia Perkins is also from Kenya, from one of the poor neighborhoods on the outskirts of Nairobi.

“It was very tough,” she said. But Perkins was good at academics.

“School was the place where I was free; I could be me,” she said.

Perkins came to the U.S. to attend Arizona State University on a scholarship as a business major. For a decade following graduation, she remained in the U.S. working in finance. But she had nurtured a dream of working in health care that hearkened back to her brother dying of complications from malaria because they didn’t have access to a hospital.

As she learned about healthcare inequities in the U.S., Perkins decided to leave finance and enter medical school.

“It’s an area where I saw myself making a difference,” she said. “I felt like my life could really have meaning if do something I’m passionate about.”

When an MRI revealed a brain bleed due to a school football concussion, med student James McCarthy had to learn how to compensate for a faulty memory. He graduated with a nursing degree from the University of Wisconsin and began working at a hospital near his hometown of Oshkosh, Wisconsin. He was a few months into orientation when their first COVID-19 patient arrived. For the next two years, he worked in the ICU wearing a “space suit” for protection.

“It was a hard couple of years. There was definitely a feeling of isolation…You’re trying to talk to these patients, to make them feel better in any way you can,” said McCarthy, who was nominated by his patients for the prestigious DAISY Award for Extraordinary Nurses, a national nursing award.

The pandemic, and the isolation it engendered, forged tight bonds between members of the medical team.

“You’re taking care of each other,” said McCarthy. “There’s a level of understanding that we were all going through the same things that people outside of medicine might not understand…that we’re all in this together.”

At the close of the ceremony, Heather Miselis, MD’00, assistant dean of alumni affairs led the students in reciting the Hippocratic Oath that guides physicians in the ethical treatment of patients. The students will recite the oath one more time, when they graduate as practicing doctors.

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