White coat ceremony

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The white coat ceremony (WCC) is a ritual in some medical schools and other health-related fields that marks the medical student's transition from the study of preclinical to clinical health sciences. At some schools, where students begin meeting patients early in their education, the white coat ceremony is held before the first year begins. It is an example of a matriculation. The ritual is a recent invention, first being popularized in the 1990s. The ceremony typically involves a formal "coating" of students by giving them a white coat. The white coat ceremony was first started by the Pritzker School of Medicine of the University of Chicago in 1989, and became a full-fledged ceremony at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University in 1993.

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