See photos from the M.D. Class of 2030 White Coat Ceremony.<\/a><\/p>\nFor Sofia Mora, the ceremony marked a homecoming. A Miami native, she returned home after earning her bachelor’s degree from Washington University in St. Louis.<\/p>\n
\u201cI missed it here so much,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Inspired by her mother, a hematologist and medical oncologist at Baptist Health Herbert Wertheim Cancer Institute, Mora hopes to one day care for the community that sparked her interest in medicine.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis population is what inspired me to want to go into medicine in the first place,\u201d she said. \u201cI want to help the vulnerable patients of Miami. That makes me really excited.\u201d<\/p>\n
For many members of the Class of 2030, FIU Medicine offers the opportunity to train close to home. Of the 128 students, 95% are from Florida, 61% from South Florida. Their local ties are especially important as many doctors go on to practice where they train, and Florida faces a projected shortage of nearly 18,000 physicians by 2035.<\/p>\n
Grace Chaffins will become a double Panther, having earned a bachelor’s degree in music at FIU. She looks forward to taking this next step in her unique journey from the stage to medicine at a university that feels like home.<\/p>\n
\u201cI loved FIU so much,\u201d said Chaffins. \u201cIt\u2019s such an honor to be able to stay here.\u201d<\/p>\n
A trained opera singer, she plans to continue performing and using music as a creative outlet throughout medical school. Bringing her two passions together, Chaffins opened the ceremony with performances of the national anthem and FIU Alma Mater.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Their medical education officially begins with a white coat\u2014a simple garment with profound meaning, representing years of hard…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":362859,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[225,227,226],"class_list":["post-362858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-hialeah","tag-hialeah","tag-hialeah-headlines","tag-hialeah-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=362858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362858\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/362859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=362858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=362858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=362858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}