Julaine Hunter, DVM
25 April 2014
Last summer LazyPaw Animal Hospitals was lucky to have not only one but two veterinary students elect to spend their summer working in our Frisco hospital. These two exceptional individuals are students at Oklahoma State University, Center for Veterinary Health Sciences in Stillwater. This past fall both elected to leave us and to return classes. (I guess this is not too surprising given the amount of dedicated time, emotion and money expended getting to where they are today.) What is amazing is that despite their jam packed schedules both have continued their relationship through correspondence and visits to our hospital during school breaks. And they had yet another surprise in store! A few months ago Dr. Bilhartz and I received an invitation to participate in a very special ceremony to be held at the Center for Veterinary Health Sciences for the Class of 2015 on Friday, April 25, 2014 in the Stillwater community center, a White Coat Transition Ceremony. This tradition, started at OSU’s Veterinary College in 2006, marks the beginning of clinical rotations and memorializes the critical step forward third-year veterinary students make when transitioning to their fourth your clinical rotations.
The original white coat ceremony was designed to impress upon medical students, graduate physicians and the general public the great responsibility they were about to accept. Created by Dr. Arnold Gold of Columbia University Medical School in 1993, Dr. Gold felt that the profession would better be served if students recited the Hippocratic oath and had conferred to them white coats when first exposed to clinical medical rotations rather than, to his mind four years too late, upon their graduation from medical school. This remarkable concept has spread to numerous human medical and schools of veterinary medicine across the Nation. The White Coat Ceremony is a means of articulating and impressing upon doctors-soon- to-be their professional responsibilities. For veterinary students, this is a way of introducing them to the responsibility of the veterinarian-patient-client relationship through receipt of a physical object symbolic of the profession, the white coat, and all the obligations inherent to practitioners of veterinary medicine to be excellent in science, compassion and morality. We are humbled and gratified by the invitation of Veterinarian-to-be Ms. Amy Lenz of Frisco, TX who will be transitioning from her third year and into her fourth and final year of veterinary medical school on this most auspicious day. We are so very honored to participate in this next step in her journey of becoming a veterinarian. We cannot wait to see your star shine.
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