Synopsis
Medical training is many things. It is certainly a privilege. For many, it is the fulfillment of a lifelong dream. It is simultaneously grueling and rewarding. It is also an acculturation process: an adjustment to rules, expectations, taboos, and traditions rooted in several thousand years’ worth of history. Throughout medical school and residency training, we mold our appearance, vocabulary, and actions to fit within the culture of medicine. It seems like before we have a moment to take a breath and think critically about who we’re becoming, we’ve all but internalized these traditions.
Enter White Coat Ways. In the book, Dr. Elliott takes his readers on a tour of phenomena critical to the identity of the modern physician. His evidence-based approach to the appraisal of pillars of medicine such as physical examinations, white coats, and the Hippocratic oath is refreshing. The book is well-researched and home to a plethora of amusing and illuminating historical anecdotes.
For better or worse, where we’ve been informs where we are going. I encourage all physicians to read White Coat Ways, but especially those of us who have asked why we do something a certain way in medicine and were met with an answer along the lines of “that’s the way it has always been done.” Ubiquity breeds complacency. We can keep blindly idealizing our historical heroes and the institutions they built or learn from our past and try to do better.