Why Do Doctors Where White Coats? - Anita

• The white coat or laboratory coat is a knee length smock or overcoat worn by professionals in the medical field or those involved in laboratory work.
•  The white coats doctors wear go back more than 100 years and started with Dr. Arnold P. Gold, who used the coats to welcome new doctors into the fold.  
•  A child's earliest memory of a doctor is the person in the white coat. Patients expect to be treated in doctors' offices, hospitals and clinics by an individual wearing white.
• Physicians dressed themselves in black and were painted in black garb until the late 19th century.
• Doctors do not have to wear white coats, depending on their geographic location and place of employment. Those doctors working in the fields of psychiatry and pediatric medicine usually go without wearing a white coat.