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I recently attended the “White Coat Ceremony” for entering medical students at the University of Kansas School of Medicine. The entering class, having completed their week of orientation, is welcomed to the school by its dignitaries in front of an audience of their families, friends and loved ones. Then each student walks to the stage while his/her name and hometown are read, and has a white coat placed on them by a member of the faculty. They then take an “Oath of Commitment” (different from the “Oath of Hippocrates” they will take at graduation) and at the end, in a semi-joke, told that “Classes start Monday at 9!”
Hokey? Well, maybe a little when it’s described, but very moving in person. Each one of the 175 people receiving the short white coat (traditional for students) is an individual person who has worked very hard to get there and they are (I assume almost all if not all of them) sincere and committed to helping people and making a difference. If studies have shown a scary drop in empathy in medical students in their 3rd year (Are we training physicians to be empathic? Apparently not., September 12, 2009), that is more than 2 years off. If long hours of classes and studying what will often seem trivia in the biomedical sciences scarcely related to being a doctor will fill most of those 2 years, it is not on the agenda today. Today it is about “keeping their eyes on the prize” but also recognizing it will be hard work. In the Oath of Commitment they pledge to work hard, to know their limitations and seek to learn enough to overcome them, and to be life-long learners. They say:
"I will strive to preserve the dignity, the humanity and the privacy of all my patients, and through my openness and kindness I will seek to earn their trust in turn.
I will treat my patients and my colleagues as my fellow beings and never discriminate against them for their differences; and I will ask that they do the same for me.”
This expostulation of altruism is, obviously, in marked contrast to the mean-spirited negativism that is characterizing the political campaigns of the day in Kansas (and elsewhere) that I recently addressed on this blog (The political campaign and the future of health reform, July 28, 2010), and criticized in the July 30, 2010 editorial in the Kansas City Star, which notes that, while Nancy Pelosi is not running in Kansas, candidates (mostly conservative Republicans) are attacking their primary opponents (mostly conservative Republicans) by calling them supporters of the Speaker, and even (gasp!) the President. In a few cases, such as the Republican primary for Secretary of State, Elizabeth Ensley, the well-qualified, highly-endorsed candidate surprises Star interviewers by "...blurting out 'I’m pro-life.' When asked what that had to do with the record-keeping office for which she was running, she answered, 'Well, nothing, but people always seem to want to know.’ Of course, Ensley could be forgiven for losing focus. Her GOP opponent, Kris Kobach, is trying to define the race as being about illegal immigration. It’s not.”
I really enjoy hearing where the students are from. Some are from surrounding states like Missouri and Colorado and Nebraska, some from farther away like California and New York, and even a few from other countries. But most are from Kansas, and from all over Kansas. Yes, there are higher proportions from the metropolitan areas of Wichita and suburban Kansas City; but also from the “larger” (for Kansas) cities like Lawrence and Topeka and Hutchinson and lots from places like Goodland and Oberlin and Neosho and Medicine Lodge, where maybe, if the people there are lucky, some of them will return to enter practice.
And then the “Doctor’s Notes”, the student a capella singing group, did a beautiful rendition of John Lennon’s "Imagine". It’s a very lovely song, and it expresses sentiments that are very different from those we are hearing on the local and national political scene. Worried about Nancy Pelosi? Barack Obama? They’re nothing but compromising politicians; our students sang Lennon’s lyrics:
“Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too,”
Not a position likely to garner a lot of votes in Kansas. I don’t know the politics of the students in the entering class, or their families, are, but having watched the volunteer work of their predecessors, in the student-run free clinic in Kansas City and in work around the world, I wouldn’t be surprised if many of them see some of their beliefs reflected in the verse that says:
“Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...”
OK, maybe not the “no possessions” part, but caring for others part. And, if we are lucky, they will continue to care. They will maintain their empathy through the 3rd year of medical school and beyond. They will be life-long learners who care for people and about people, and live a life not simply of service, but of brotherhood. They will truly be healers, and not destroyers. It’s way too early to know, but we can hope that they will be.
Imagine.
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