The University of Toledo

Student Clinician Ceremony

The Student Clinician's Ceremony (SCC) is a transitional experience designed to provide guidance, information and support to medical students beginning their clerkships.  The event is developed by students with the assistance of an advisor and aims to address some of the anxiety felt by students entering their clerkships.  By providing insight, discussing fears and expectations, and revisiting the oath taken during the White Coat Ceremony, the SCC provides a forum for collective and reflective discussion of the students’ experiences in medicine to date.  It also underscores the challenges and imperatives to providing humanistic care to patients at the same time as they are pressed to demonstrate high standards of skill performance.

The SCC also recognizes outstanding residents through the Arnold P. Gold Foundation's Humanism and Excellence in Teaching Award.  Third year students choose up to six residents who have exhibited particularly strong teaching skills and are role models for compassionate, relationship-centered care.  At the ceremony, students describe why each resident was chosen, and the residents address the class of incoming third year students.

Each year students select a keynote speaker who serves as a humanistic role model.  All rising third- and fourth-year students attend this very important rite of passage.

For more information, visit the Gold Foundation website.  For the 2007 program, click here.

Twenty-nine students were inducted into the Gold Humanism Honor Society.

The keynote speaker was Dr. William Hablitzel, a 1986 graduate of what was then the Medical College of Ohio.  He is also the author of Dying Was the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me:  Stories of Healing and Wisdom Along Life's Journey.

Students revisit the Medical Student Pledge of Ethics, which they first recited during their first week as medical students.