Boy in a nursing lab
Interim Department of Nursing Science Chair Roxanne Wilson opened the ceremony by welcoming students into the nursing profession and led both nursing students and current nurses in reciting a Nursing Oath.
Forty-nine new students recited a Nursing Oath based on the 1935 Florence Nightingale Pledge.
Students came forward during the ceremony to be “cloaked” by faculty before family and friends to signify their status as nursing students.
The ceremony included a welcome and each student received their coat after taking the oath.
Assistant Professor Amy Hilleren-Listerud gave the keynote address. Hilleren-Listerud is also president of the Kappa Phi at-Large chapter of Sigma Theta Tau International Nursing Honor Society.
In 1993, Dr. Arnold P. Gold, a professor and pediatric neurologist, initiated a White Coat Ceremony at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians & Surgeons. Gold, a passionate advocate for humanistic healthcare, believed that the traditional oath taken by new physicians at the end of medical school came too late. Through the nonprofit organization that he and his wife, Dr. Sandra Gold, started, The Arnold P. Gold Foundation has expanded the White Coat Ceremony to other healthcare professions, including nursing.
St. Cloud State University was among 50 nursing schools selected by the Gold Foundation in 2018 for a grant to launch their first White Coat Ceremony.
Today, nearly every medical school in the United States, hundreds of nursing schools, and many other health profession schools around the globe participate in this tradition of humanistic care.
