The “White Coat Ceremony,” at which newly enrolled students in Yale’s School of Medicine receive their traditional doctors’ coats, will be held on Yale’s Harkness Lawn today at 4:30 p.m.
The deans of the individual medical school departments will put the coats, sometimes referred to as “cloaks of compassion,” on each student. Medical School Dean David Kessler, M.D., will officiate at the ceremony, which is attended by family and friends.
Robert Udelsman, M.D., newly appointed chair of the Department of Surgery, will raise important questions about medicine in an address titled “Medical Mysticism.”
During the ceremony the 100 new students also will recite the Medical School’s Human Relations Code of Conduct. The doctors-in-training have remarkable backgrounds in scientific research, as well as in a variety of other fields. They also have an average GPA of 3.74, one of the highest in 10 years.
Harkness Lawn is located at 367 Cedar St.