More Stuff

While addressing a room filled with UMC medical school faculty and new medical students, Dr. Daniel P. Edney pulled out one of his lab coats. Well worn and wrinkled, its only remaining pocket bulged at the seams from the pens, folded notepaper and other essential items the speaker of the House of Delegates for the Mississippi State Medical Association (MSMA) had stuffed into it.

Yet it was symbolic of the message Edney presented to the Class of 2006 at the White Coat Ceremony Aug. 20 in the conference center of the Norman C. Nelson Student Union.

"You're about to get a brand new white coat," Edney told the class, "but there are going to be times when you have stains on it or a tear in it. There are going to be times when you get discouraged, especially when a patient is not very appreciative of the hard work you've done.

"But keep your focus. When it's really getting hard, go back to tonight and remember why you're here, remember that calling, that sense of purpose. That white coat can always be sent to the cleaners, and your calling can be restored again, too."

Dr. Wallace Conerly, vice chancellor for health affairs, presided over the ceremony in which 104 new medical students recited the Oath of Hippocrates, an oath they will repeat at graduation. The students also received a white coat, a "Humanism in Medicine" lapel pin and a copy of On Doctoring, a medical anthology edited by Dr. John Stone, given to every first-year medical student in the country via a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Stone, a native Mississippian, spoke at the 2001 White Coat Ceremony.

"You have so many opportunities today in medicine, and I hope you take the full measure of these while you are here," Conerly told the new students. "I hope tonight's ceremony is symbolic of the moral, ethical and caring way you will conduct your life from this point forward as you join this noble profession."

According to Dr. Steven Case, associate dean of admissions, this year's freshmen represent 29 colleges and universities, including 10 from Mississippi and 19 from out of state. They range in age from 21 to 38 with a mean GPA of 3.76 and a mean MCAT score of 27.5. The class is 34 percent female and 15 percent minority, with nine percent African-American.

Case, who said this year's M1s comprise one of the top classes the Medical Center has had over the past five years, challenged the students with a sobering fact.

"Beginning tonight, no one can take your place," Case said. "Either you succeed, or Mississippi loses a doctor."

Conerly broke from the order of the program to formally announce Edney's appointment as a clinical associate professor of medicine at UMC. Edney, a Meridian native and Vicksburg physician who took his residency in internal medicine at the University of Virginia in Charlottsville, said the appointment made the ceremony twice as special.

"It is indeed a great honor for me to be appointed to the clinical faculty," he said. "I can well remember when I first entered medical school 18 years ago. I see a lot of the same excitement in this room, the same urgency. You have a big day ahead of you tomorrow, but I want the excitement you feel now to carry forward - it needs to sustain you for quite a while."

He challenged the students to invest themselves fully into their study of medicine.

"Really embrace the educational journey you are beginning tomorrow," he said. "Put your whole heart and being into your course of study, because it is shaping who you will become. The type of medical student that you are will determine the type of physician you will become.

"You will have a very short amount of time to master a great deal of information. Are you going to strive the rest of your life to excel in your practice, research, or teaching abilities? You will be making that choice tomorrow."

Edney urged the students to enjoy the experience of obtaining a medical education.

"Your life with us is a glorious life - don't let it become mundane," he said. "Do it for yourself, but more importantly, do it for your patients. They are just a few years down the road, but they want you and need you to be the best physician you can be."

He closed by assuring the class that, although the coats they received may be finely pressed, shiny and brilliantly white, they already have an important place in the medical profession.

"Understand that you are part of a family," he said. "You are part of this special profession called medicine, this special job we will tender as physicians, as doctors. It's still exciting, it's still joyous and it's still wonderful to be a doctor.

"Welcome to the family."
Bruce Coleman

Oath of Hippocrates
I do solemnly swear by that which I hold most sacred:
That I will be loyal to the profession of medicine and just and generous to its members;
That I will lead my life and practice my art in uprightness and honor;
That into whatsoever house I shall enter, it shall be for the good of the sick to the utmost of my power, I holding myself aloof from wrong, from corruption, from the tempting of others to vice;
That I will exercise my art solely for the cure of my patients, and will give no drug, perform no operation, for a criminal purpose even if solicited, far less suggest it;
That whatsoever I shall see or hear of the lives of men which is not fitting to be spoken, I will keep inviolably secret;
These things do I promise, and in proportion as I am faithful to this oath, may happiness and good repute be ever mine - the opposite if I shall be forsworn.