Delivered at the White Coat Ceremony, January 15, 2012, Quisqueya University:
Good evening. I would like to thank Dean Poitevien and you, the graduating students, for allowing the Haiti Medical Education Project to be part of your celebration. I’d also like to thank the Gold Foundation for trusting us to bring this ceremony of humanism in medicine to Haiti. This ceremony is generously funded by the Gold foundation in 95% of US medical schools, and now, starting with you, it is celebrated in Haiti as well.
Some of you may be asking yourselves, when medical school buildings and operating rooms have yet to be rebuilt and a single medical textbook is a luxury, when we have no laboratories and so many of our brothers and sisters still live in makeshift homes, why invest in an event such as this Ceremony of Humanism in Medicine? My answer is this: when everything else is broken, our human dignity needs to stand whole. When pain and suffering is all around us, we as physicians must heal with compassion as well as with medicine. This ceremony is both a celebration and a reminder of the physician’s vow to practice the art of healing with love, respect and dignity. In a few moments, you will recite this vow, the Hippocratic Oath, in unison and enter our extraordinary profession. I urge you to remember its wise words in the difficult, and more importantly, in the mundane moments of practicing the physicians’ art.
