Short White Coats: Knowledge, Identity, and Status Negotiations of First‐Year Medical Students

Abstract

This paper investigates the meanings medical students invest in their white coats and how these meanings shape students' strategic use of the white coat as a status symbol. During a four‐year ethnography of medical education, I found that the white coat signified knowledgeability and was used to assert status. In interactions students policed their own and each other's status displays, a process I identify as an instance of status management in medical training. An analysis of the meanings and conventional uses of the short white coat increases our understanding of how novice trainees negotiate their place in a new social order.