[img_inline align=”right” src=”http://padnws01.mcmaster.ca/images/White_Coat2007.jpg” caption=”First-year medical students received their white coats on Tuesday, Oct. 9. Photo courtesy of FHS.”]First-year medical students in McMaster University's Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine donned white coats for the first time during the annual White Coat ceremony on Tuesday, Oct. 9.

The White Coat ceremony is symbolic for the 165 future physicians, as it represents their entrance to the medical profession and their responsibility for patients.

“The white coat helps provide physicians with identity…not the type of identity afforded by the stage or spotlight, but rather the type of identity that accepts responsibility, that acts on behalf of those who cannot act on their own,” Dr. John Kelton, dean of the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine, told the students.

“In this way, the white coat is less about the people who wear it than it is about the people who see it at their times of greatest need.”

More than 800 friends and family of the students were in attendance at the Hamilton Convention Centre ceremony. The Class of 2010 members of the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine is the largest in McMaster's history, and includes the inaugural 15 students of the new Waterloo campus.