UMSOM Rising Third-Year Medical Students Celebrate Annual Student Clinician Ceremony

UMSOM Class of 2025 Celebrates the Beginning of Clinical Care Training

The University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) recently hosted the Student Clinician Ceremony & Family Celebration to help prepare rising third-year medical students for their clinical rotations. The event took place at the Lyric Baltimore on April 21, 2023. During their rotation year, students begin seeing patients alongside doctors and residents as they gain experience in primary care and medical specialties.

The Student Clinician Ceremony is typically a small event held at the School with students and faculty. However, since these students were unable to have their families and friends join in person for their White Coat Ceremony due to the pandemic, this year’s Student Clinician Ceremony was staged on a larger scale this year. During the ceremony, faculty members presented students in the Class of 2025 with professionalism pins to wear on their white coats as a constant reminder of their commitment to their patients and profession.

UMSOM Dean Mark T. Gladwin, MD, who is also the Vice President for Medical Affairs, UM Baltimore, and the John Z. and Akiko K. Bowers Distinguished Professor, directly addressed students in his remarks. "As a student-physician on your very first day, you will be entrusted to enter every patient's private physical and emotional world,” he said. "I believe you represent a new generation who want to step into the trenches and address health care equity and social justice. You all are ready to make a difference and positive impact on our imperfect world.”

Serving as the ceremony’s keynote speaker, Rodney J. Taylor, MD, MPH, the Bruce and Isobel Cleland Chair of Otorhinolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery, assured students they are adequately prepared for the road ahead. “There should be no cause for delay or timidity,” he said. “Patients and their families are longing for your professionalism and humanism. You are more than ready to show your well-earned gifts and begin to transform the lives of patients with your power to heal and make them whole.”

Medical student Ella Ardoin, MD/MPH Candidate ’26, credits her personal experience of being a caregiver with her strong desire to be an advocate for disadvantaged patients. “I became a caregiver at 16 years old to my youngest sibling who was diagnosed at birth with sickle cell disease,” she said. “My experiences in life have afforded me the unique opportunity to see health care from both the perspective of a provider and the patient/family vantage point. Although my path to medical school as a first-generation student has not been easy, my journey has empowered me to be a voice for those who may experience disparities in health and care.”

Medical student Donald De Alwis, MD Candidate '25, recognizes the invaluable experience of applying what he has learned in the classroom to a clinical environment. “Our ceremony marks an important step forward in our journey towards practicing medicine confidently and independently,” he said. “We have gained a tremendous amount of textbook knowledge, but the next stage of our training requires us to draw upon this knowledge in real time and use it in service of our patients. Our classroom knowledge cannot exist without practical experience, and our ceremony represents an important transition in how we continue to refine our practice of medicine.”

Medical student Shani Kamberi, MD/MPH Candidate ’26, recalls the person who inspired her to begin her medical school journey. “The defining moment that steered me towards a career in medicine can be attributed to my high school English teacher, Mr. Jonathan Bos, who underwent a life-changing heart transplant,” she said. “Mr. Bos profoundly inspired me through his journey and gave me a deep appreciation for the life-saving potential of transplantation medicine. As I work alongside Maryland’s clinical teams, I hope to further develop my medical knowledge gained during our preclinical years.”

For medical student Dennis Morozov, MD Candidate ’25, the ceremony offers him and his fellow classmates the opportunity to celebrate their hard work and dedication over the past two years. “This ceremony is a celebration of all the things students in my class have accomplished so far and a reminder of what is to come,” he said. “Being a clinician is different than being a student. Clinicians are held to a higher standard -- a standard that all of us must strive to reach before graduation.”

Before the ceremony concluded, students recited the Student Clinician Oath as a pledge to their patients in the next stage of their medical education.

About the University of Maryland School of Medicine

Now in its third century, the University of Maryland School of Medicine was chartered in 1807 as the first public medical school in the United States. It continues today as one of the fastest growing, top-tier biomedical research enterprises in the world — with 46 academic departments, centers, institutes, and programs, and a faculty of more than 3,000 physicians, scientists, and allied health professionals, including members of the National Academy of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences, and a distinguished two-time winner of the Albert E. Lasker Award in Medical Research. With an operating budget of more than $1.3 billion, the School of Medicine works closely in partnership with the University of Maryland Medical Center and Medical System to provide research-intensive, academic, and clinically based care for nearly 2 million patients each year. The School of Medicine has nearly $600 million in extramural funding, with most of its academic departments highly ranked among all medical schools in the nation in research funding. As one of the seven professional schools that make up the University of Maryland, Baltimore campus, the School of Medicine has a total population of nearly 9,000 faculty and staff, including 2,500 students, trainees, residents, and fellows. The combined School of Medicine and Medical System (“University of Maryland Medicine”) has an annual budget of over $6 billion and an economic impact of nearly $20 billion on the state and local community. The School of Medicine, which ranks as the 8th highest among public medical schools in research productivity (according to the Association of American Medical Colleges profile) is an innovator in translational medicine, with 606 active patents and 52 start-up companies. In the latest U.S. News & World Report ranking of the Best Medical Schools, published in 2021, the UM School of Medicine is ranked #9 among the 92 public medical schools in the U.S., and in the top 15 percent (#27) of all 192 public and private U.S. medical schools. The School of Medicine works locally, nationally, and globally, with research and treatment facilities in 36 countries around the world. Visit medschool.umaryland.edu

Student Clinician Ceremony 2023 Image Gallery