School of Medicine and Dentistry Organises White Coat Ceremony

 
The School of Medicine and Dentistry has organised White Coat Ceremony for the Class of 2019 at the new Examinations Hall, Charles Easemon Building Korle Bu.
The Dean, Professor Margaret Lartey in her welcome address said the year 2016 White Coat Ceremony was the 4th since the School started organising the Ceremony. She urged the students to take the ceremony serious because it was a very important milestone in their training as medical and dental students. 
 
 
 
The Vice Dean of the School, Dr. Francis Kwamin told the students that they were done with the Basic and Para Clinical Sciences. He added that the students would be interacting with human beings so they needed to be very professional in their dealings with their patients. The Vice Dean asked the students to ensure that their words were comforting and reassuring to their patients.
 
Speaking at the ceremony, the immediate past Provost of the College of Health Sciences and a member of the Ghana Medical and Dental Council, Professor Yao Tettey, noted that the White Coat Ceremony was an important one that must be observed with all the seriousness it deserved.
Professor Tettey asked the students to dress professionally at all times. He told them that their dressing could increase the confidence and trust their patients could have in their ability to take care of all their sicknesses. He therefore asked them to present themselves in ways that will give their patients the confidence to be able to tell them their health problems. He also asked the students to learn good human relations and also develop excellent communication skills.
 
Prof Tettey advised the students to humble themselves so that their lecturers could teach them all the skills they needed to have in order to become very good dental surgeons and medical doctors. He told them that there were some skills that they would never find in any textbook except through the apprenticeship training they will have under their lecturers.
He concluded by appealing to the faculty to do well to teach and mentor the students well because the students were the ones that would take care of them when they were sick in future.
In all, a total of 246 students made up of 153 medical, 42 dental and 51 Graduate Entry Medical Programme (GEMP) students took the oath  at the ceremony. The faculty cloaked the students in their first white coat as a symbol of the trust being bestowed upon them to carry on the noble profession of doctoring.
 
 
 
 
The White Coat Ceremony is considered as rite of passage for medical and dental students who have completed the preclinical sciences and are about to begin the clinical phase of their training.