A Mantle of Trust
Good morning!
Last night it was my privilege to be part of one of our most exciting and significant events, and one of my very favorites: the White Coat Ceremony for incoming medical students.
By placing a white coat on each student’s shoulders, we offer them a formal welcome into our family, our house, our house of medicine.
This year, we used the occasion to welcome 170 future physicians in the Class of 2027. By putting on the white coat, they accepted the honor of caring for patients when they are sick, injured and vulnerable. Nothing, I believe, will give them a greater reward. Their future patients will look at that white coat as a mantle of responsibility, obligation and trust. And there will be an understanding that they will be taken care of in a certain way.
One of our own, from the class of 1995, has experienced as much as anyone that kind of reward. Dr. John “Jay” Wellons III presented the evening’s keynote address.
A native of Columbia, Dr. Wellons is the chief of pediatric neurosurgery at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and is a world-renowned pioneer in fetal surgery. As an undergraduate at the University of Mississippi, he majored in English and is also a writer. Last year, he published a book: “All That Moves Us: A Pediatric Neurosurgeon, His Young Patients, and Their Stories of Grace and Resilience.”
Dr. Wellons’ eloquence as a writer was on display last night. He paid tribute to his training at our medical school, and assured our newest medical students that they would be “phenomenally trained, well-prepared, so that when you leave, you will have an understanding of clinical medicine that graduates from other medical schools simply do not have.” A wonderful endorsement.
I wish I could share with you his entire speech, but I’ll limit myself to a sampling of his most striking thoughts and advice:
[On loss]: “You all will most certainly make your own stories. There will be lives pulled back from just over the edge, and lives lost that you cannot forget … no matter how hard you try.”
[On cooperation]: “Immerse yourself in each clinical rotation while you are here. Approach it like you’re going to be in that field, even if you have no idea. … It will allow you to feel like you’re a part of that team, and you’ll learn how to move within a group of people and have an appreciation of exactly how hard other fields are …
“Appreciate the intricacies of each and every field. We are all needed.”
[On empathy]: “Also honor the times when you were there when there was no hope for survival, no hope for one last conversation and one last, ‘I love you.’
“You will come to learn that sometimes our role is not to just save lives or take away suffering but to help the families understand when it is time to let go. The quality that allows you to do all of this is compassion.”
[On burnout]: “I think the way that we steel ourselves to make it through those times comes back to some of the things we’ve been talking about here. … Having gratitude for the wonder of medicine. Celebrating the times of joy with your patients, guiding them as best as we can through their grief; and, the most important thing, acknowledging the profound honor it is to take care of people in their most vulnerable times.”
I want to thank Dr. Wellons again for delivering those words of enlightenment and inspiration. What he said and has written about compassion, about working together, about having gratitude for our gifts and our good times, can benefit all of us here at the Medical Center. Regardless of which school we are attending, whatever hospital or clinic we work in, and regardless of our roles, we will work together, moving forward toward A Healthier Mississippi.
