It’s important to offer medical students enough experience with homeless and estranged patient populations to foster their sense of self-efficacy and development of positive attitudes.
Pairing medical students with chronically ill community volunteers for 2 years helps those students gain appreciation for the experience of illness, develop self-reflection and perspective-taking, and learn to communicate with people who may be quite unlike them.
Adaptive, simulation-based Internet training sites with intelligent agents can offer medical students a virtual clinic for learning about the process and multiple outcomes of patient decision making.
Research ethics should be included in the medical school curriculum so students and residents can fully understand the ethical implications of medical research.