140 DNP Students Receive Their White Coats at Annual Ceremony
Friends and family gathered on October 16 to celebrate with 140 first-year Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) students as faculty “cloaked” them in their white coats for the first time.
Held at Columbia Nursing since 2017, the White Coat Ceremony marks the transition to clinical rotations and honors students’ commitment to patient care.
During the ceremony, alumni speaker Lizette Kimbere Zayas, DNP ’20, reflected on the responsibilities that come with the profession and described what this commitment entails: “I want you to practice compassion and integrity. I want you to be an advocate for our profession. And I want you to give back and volunteer…As you enter this profession and wear this white coat, think about your responsibility to treat people as human, with compassion, and with dignity.”
Two DNP students while preparing for the ceremony described what the transition to clinical work meant for them. “I'm really excited about diving deep and really getting a firm understanding of how things apply clinically and how we can apply my bedside experience to helping our patients get better, said Cynthia Tiangco-Withers, MS ’24, who is in her first year of the Adult-Gerontology Acute Care Nurse Practitioner Program.
“Receiving my white coat to me means more than just a continuation of my education and another milestone that I've met,” said Kenneth Carr, who is in the DNP Nurse Anesthesia Program. “For me, it means responsibility and trust. Responsibility to my patients and to myself to ensure that I'm the best clinician that I could possibly be, taking care of patients during their most vulnerable times.
