One way of thinking about whether medical school candidates' personalities should influence admission is to ask the question, "Would you want this person to care for one of your loved ones?"

For a medical school admissions committee to consider social networking activities during the selection process without informing candidates would violate the principles of transparency and consistency and could lead to worthy applications being rejected.

In the September 2014 issue on physicians as agents of social change, Dr. Audiey Kao, editor-in-chief of Virtual Mentor interviewed Dr. Rajiv Shah, administrator of the United States Agency for International Development or USAID.

The call for structural competency encourages medicine to broaden its approach to matters of race and culture so that it might better address both individual-level doctor and patient characteristics and institutional factors.

Telemedicine's potential to advance humanitarian efforts can be realized through further research into best practices, codification of responsibilities and liabilities, counseling and informed consent prior to the creation of electronic health records, strengthening of IT infrastructure, and the integration of an informatics curriculum into residency training programs.

International trade policies affect the distribution of life-saving medicine, the food market, and the migration of medical personnel from developing countries.

The AMA Code of Medical Ethics' opinions on confidentiality of patient information.

The duty to care has specific definitions and implications for students planning global health electives.

Many factors may motivate students to pursue global health electives.

The WHO Clinical Staging System for HIV/AIDS allows physicians in resource-limited settings to make clinical decisions based on patient clinical features instead of laboratory tests.