SOM Class of 2029 Officially Don Their White Coats for the First Time

Jane Ponterio, M.D. ’81, dean of students, who served as the master of ceremonies, opened the ceremony. “As you don your white coat for the first time, you are not only stepping into a new chapter of your education, you are making a solemn promise to uphold the values of compassionate care and ethical practice,” she said, before going on to introduce several other speakers to offer their guidance to the first-year medical students.

“The next four years, you probably will spend more waking hours with your classmates than with your family. I ask that you treat each other with humanism—with empathy, integrity, and kindness,” said Martin Katzenstein, M.D. ’78, chair of the NYMC Board of Advisors and assistant dean of clinical affiliations. “Help each other, study with each other, and lift each other up. Recognize your classmates if they are having physical, emotional, or psychological difficulties. And reach out to them, try to help them, or get them help. As Dr. Gold said, ‘Humanism is in medicine, it's not an elective, it is a responsibility. Your responsibility.’”

The co-presidents of the NYMC chapter of the Gold Humanism Honor Society, Sarah Ampallor, SOM Class of 2026, and Audrey Huang, SOM Class of 2026, also offered their advice. “Medical school is where you discover how incredible the human body is and how capable your minds are,” said Ampallor. “My advice for you all is to keep going back to why you wanted to become physicians in the first place, especially in difficult moments where your stress is overwhelming. When I think about why medicine is fulfilling to me, it always comes back to the people. The privilege of medicine is not just diagnosing and treating disease, but being present with patients and their families on some of the scariest days of their lives.”

“Over the course of my training at NYMC, I've had the privilege of witnessing some really remarkable moments that have stayed with me,” said Huang. “The surgeon who pulled up a chair and drew an operation on a scrap of paper so the patient could better understand what to expect. The obstetrician who knelt to the ground to embrace mothers through both overwhelming joy and profound loss. The neurologist who listened patiently as a patient struggled to find words that their brain no longer allowed. I've seen this dedication in my peers, the residents, nursing staff, everyone who works tirelessly to support patients, and it has helped shape my own approach to patient care. Those moments taught me that medicine isn't just about science and memorizing facts, it's about humanism. It's the small gestures, the attentiveness, the presence, and the compassion that patients remember long after they leave the exam room.”

SOM dean Neil Schluger, M.D., introduced the keynote speaker, Renee Garick, M.D., professor of medicine at NYMC and, for more than 20 years, the chief medical officer at Westchester Medical Center. “There are three qualities that all of the members of the class should always strive for—excellence, humility, and the requirement that you see every patient as someone who's deserving of the highest level of care and the greatest degree of compassion. I really can't think of anybody who embodies those values better than Dr. Garrick.”  

“Over my career, I've learned that the science of medicine and the practice of medicine are actually two very different things,” said Dr. Garrick. To illustrate what it means to be a physician, she then went on to share the story of her friend’s grandson, a 12-year-old boy, who had been rushed to the emergency room after being crushed by a truck.

“The ensuing scene in the emergency room and the OR involved nurses, technicians, radiologists, couriers, the entire blood bank, and 20 different highly skilled teams of surgeons from trauma, orthopedics, vascular, abdominal surgery, and urology. For many weeks, it was unclear if [the boy] would even live, much less walk,” she said. However, after a long and arduous course in the hospital, the boy recovered, and when he left to go to rehab, the entire care team held a clap-out for him. Last August, when he returned for the hospital’s Trauma Survivor Day, he walked in using only a cane.

“As I sat with my friend, it was enormously clear that the [family] had great respect for the amazing skill of our team, but that's not what they spoke about. Instead, the family shared how their doctors treated them, how they made them feel, their kindness and compassion as they sat by their beds, holding his hand and giving him and his parents hugs,” she continued. “Those physicians, they will be your mentors, they will hug, guide you, and teach you, and they will share with you what many before us have already learned, that the soul of medicine, the art of being a physician, is learning that what really counts in life, what really matters, is rarely visible to the naked eye.

“It's a remarkable privilege to be a doctor. In some ways, there's something almost sacred about it. The relationships that you forge with your patients are part of a very deep fabric of medicine, and as you advance in your training, I plead with you. Don't listen to what you hear from managed care companies and from the business of medicine. Your patients will never be your customers. They will never be your clients. You must be careful about the arrogance that can come from learning and from knowledge. If someone says to you that you're doing something, perhaps incorrectly, or offers you some advice about some detail that you might have missed, the words you are looking for are ‘thank you’. There's no ego in medicine. The practice of medicine instead means putting your egos aside.

“Today, you're about to don your white coat, the white coat of a physician, for the very first time in your lives. It's a serious accomplishment, and you should be very proud, and you should don it with pride, but you should also don it with a purpose. While some might talk about helping others, that is something that you will do every day of your career. So when it's late at night and you're tired and you have one more lab to check or one more note to write or one more call to answer, take a look in the mirror, and remember why you chose the profession of medicine and what an enormous privilege it is to be a doctor.”

After Dr. Garrick concluded her moving and inspiring address, it was at last the time for the highlight of the event, the bestowal of the white coats on NYMC’s newest future physicians. As family and friends applauded enthusiastically, each group of students, more than 230 in all, came forward to be donned in their white coats. The event concluded with the recitation of an oath that the Class had developed to guide them during their time in medical school until they take the Hippocratic Oath at graduation and realize their dreams of becoming physicians themselves.