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White Coat Week 2023
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Students Get Hands-On Experience By Shadowing SSVMS Physicians

Kylee Blankenship and Ruth Haskins, MD

Spring means it’s time for our annual White Coat Week, when students from local high schools shadow doctors and get an up-close insight into a potential career in medicine.

This year, 24 students from 10 high schools were selected. Half of the total enrollment of White Coat Week is reserved for students attending Title 1 schools, which receive federal aid due to a high percentage of students from disadvantaged families. Giving these students a taste of what the practice of medicine can offer can be a big step toward diversifying the health care workforce and ensuring better care for more communities.

Matthew Tong and concussion specialist Ash Raina, MD. Students Jia Li Zhou, Nandika Karthik, Bahar Zahir and Amidala Geetaumesh with Debbie Aizenberg, MD (center).

We welcomed UC Davis Health to White Coat Week this year. Students shadowed UCD and private practice doctors in specialties that included family and community medicine, otolaryngology, internal medicine, ophthalmology, dermatology, obstetrics, neurological surgery and anesthesiology.

“My most memorable experience was when I got to observe an endoscopic snide surgery,” Sheldon High student Bahar Zahir, who likes to watch skull surgery videos on YouTube. “I got to feel queasy with a medical procedure for the first time!”

SSVMS thanks all the physicians who allowed the students to shadow them and made White Coat Week 2023 a success.

Sonia Shaheen learned about the life of an ophthalmologist with Barbara Arnold, MD. Jayden Sagaral (second from right) visits with dermatologist and Mohs surgeon Andrea Willey, MD and her staff.