White Coat ceremonies making up for lost time: welcoming the class of 2026 (and 2025 and 2024)

Medical students who didn’t get an in-person welcome to medical school are finally getting their lab coats and welcome ceremonies at a number of Canadian schools. Students in the classes of 2024 and 2025 attended their white coat ceremony on Aug. 16 at Western University’s Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry in London, Ont. “Today is a culmination of a lot of the hard work that we have put in for the last two years,” said Karen Michael, a member of the class of 2025. “And it’s really starting a new phase in my life with my family and friends all supporting me here.” The ceremony is meant to be a symbolic welcome to the profession of medicine. “I’m finally welcomed into the medical community, something I’ve been working so hard to achieve, and this is the gateway to it,” said Maegan Miklas, a member of the class of 2025. “I’m very excited for the future.” Western University’s incoming medical students, the class of 2026, will be welcomed at their own ceremony in September. At the University of Toronto’s Temerty Faculty of Medicine, virtual stethoscope ceremonies were held to welcome students in 2020 and 2021. On Aug. 21, those students were able to have an in-person ceremony, allowing the students to re-affirm their commitment to medicine in the presence of friends and family, the university said. Students from the class of 2025 were welcomed with a stethoscope ceremony at the Cummings School of Medicine at the University of Calgary in early August. The class of 2024, who missed their ceremony due to the pandemic, had a belated ceremony in May. The Cummings School of Medicine’s Doctor of Medicine program is three years long. The Max Rady College of Medicine at the University of Manitoba took the White Coat ceremony on Aug. 24 as an opportunity to highlight the diversity of the class of 2026. New students include: Sheila Le, who hopes to improve access to care for the Vietnamese community in Winnipeg Bilal Raja and Muhammad Usman Raja, brothers who moved from Pakistan to Winnipeg 11 years ago and hope to work as a family physician and an emergency physician, respectively Mercedes Stemm, a Mi’kmaq woman from the Natoaganeg First Nation in New Brunswick who plans on practicing neurosurgery and improving access to care for Indigenous peoples Read: Nova Scotia looking to fast track licensing process for Ukrainian health workers

White Coat ceremonies making up for lost time: welcoming the class of 2026 (and 2025 and 2024)

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