Jocelyn Howard of London has a degree in music and voice. But she changed her tune, and decided to follow in her parents’ footsteps and become a physician.
She is one of 171 students entering first year medicine at the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry at The University of Western Ontario. This year’s class is the largest to date, with 12 more students than in the previous year.
The Class of 2014 will be welcomed with a White Coat Ceremony, Wednesday, Sept. 1 in Room 145 of the Natural Sciences Building. The program runs 10 a.m. to noon.
Schulich is one school with two campuses. Thirty-eight of the first-year students are in its Windsor Program at the University of Windsor. It now has a total of 92 students in years one, two and three.
Orientation is just the first of many activities throughout the year to ensure all medical students interact and bond as one class, whether they’re in London or Windsor.
The new dean of Schulich, Dr. Michael Strong, praised the students saying they’re entering the medical profession at a complex time.
“These medical students will be the generation of physicians who will be affected most directly by our aging population, and the constraints of our health care resources,” says Strong. “Learning to balance the objectives of compassion and health care delivery with social responsibility will be a difficult, but richly rewarding challenge for each one of them.”
During the White Coat Ceremony, medical students will be presented with a laboratory coat. In donning it, they symbolically agree to the professional, social and ethical responsibilities of becoming a physician. They will also take the Hippocratic Oath.