PHOTOS BY DENNIS ODA / DODA @STARBULLETIN.COM Nina Teruya and her father, Masakazu Teruya, celebrated last night after Nina and her fellow first-year medical students finished the White Coat Ceremony at UH-Manoa's Orvis Auditorium. In the presence of family, friends and faculty, the students were welcomed into the medical community and given white coats, stethoscopes and other items.

62 UH med students
get white coats

The annual ceremony
makes students aware
of their responsibilities

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By Helen Altonn
haltonn@starbulletin.com

Sixty-two first-year students in the University of Hawaii John A. Burns School of Medicine received their traditional white coats last night.

The White Coat Ceremony for the new class is held annually at medical schools across the nation to make the students aware of their professional responsibilities.

This year's event at UH-Manoa's Orvis Auditorium was organized and underwritten by the medical school's Class of 1981, which had 78 students.

"It was an unusually large class, even for those days," said Julie Woo, who has coordinated the ceremony since it was initiated for the class of 2000. She is an educational specialist in Medical School Dean Edwin Cadman's office.

PHOTOS BY DENNIS ODA / DODA @STARBULLETIN.COM Dr. Gerin Chun placed a white coat on Sandi Tsumoto last night during the traditional White Coat Ceremony at UH for students in the medical school's class of 2006.

Classes have been limited in recent years to 62 students based on a number of factors, including availability of clinical resources, Woo said.

There were more in-patients when students in the 1981 class were going to the medical school, she said. "Now the trend is not to keep people in hospitals as long."

Members of the class of 1981 placed the white coats, also called "cloaks of compassion," on the shoulder of each student. The pocket on each coat has an embroidered John A. Burns School of Medicine logo, designed by former UH Regent Momi Cazimero for the medical school's 25th anniversary.

The White Coat Ceremony was conceived by the Arnold P. Gold Foundation, which is dedicated to fostering humanism in medicine.