Above: Dr. Arnold P. Gold, professor of clinical neurology and of clinical pediatrics, ceremonially cloaks a student with his first white coat.

Today's entering medical students consider it tradition, but the White Coat Ceremony at P&S was created only in 1993 when the Arnold P. Gold Foundation sponsored the first ceremony. This "rite of passage" aims to instill in beginning medical students a psychological contract for professionalism and empathy in the practice of medicine. At every White Coat Ceremony, as at the first, students are challenged to give compassionate care, are encouraged to seek scientific excellence, and recite in unison the Hippocratic Oath.

Typically, medical students saved the Hippocratic Oath recitation for grguation, but the Gold Foundation encourage students to pledge to uphold the oath's tenets at the beginning of the medical school experience to instill in them a sense of responsibility and compassion from day one. Says Dr. Arnold P. Gold, professor of clinical neurology and of clinical pediatrics, and a foundation founder, "Caring plays an important part in curing." He tells students to "be the kind of doctor you would want to take care of you if you became ill."

Today, the Gold Foundation's White Coat Ceremony is observed by nearly 80 U.S. medical schools. Students are ceremonially cloaked with their first white coats by members of the Gold Foundation board. By pledging in the presence of family and friends to lead lives of compassion, first-year medical students solemnly face their responsibility to hold sacred the doctor-patient relationship.

The White Coat Ceremony is one of many P&S programs supported by the Gold Foundation, which was founded in 1988 to "create, develop, implement, evaluate, and replicate effective programs which promote compassionate and scientifically excellent medical care." The foundation's involvement at P&S also includes support of four junior faculty role models through assistant and associate professorships; student summer research fellowships that provide opportunities for students to investigate community health issues; commencement awards to a faculty member and a graduating student who best demonstrate the foundation's ideals; a home visit program for pediatric and internal medicine residents in which resident teams visit the homes of their clinic patients; the "Barriers" symposia, meetings for nationally recognized experts in medical school curricula where dialogue about barriers to sustaining humanism in medical education is encouraged; research studying medical students and their attitudes toward humanism in medicine; and student-initiated programs such as "ethics nights" discussions or panel discussions on subjects of special concern.

Dr. Gold, who is president of the foundation, co-founded the Gold Foundation with his wife, Dr. Sandra O. Gold, who is executive vice president. In addition to being a national certified counselor and national certified career counselor, she is an active member of numerous philanthropic organizations and has a special interest in advocating programs for the elderly and disabled. Dr. Arnold Gold has been on the faculty of P&S since 1967.