This month, Virtual Mentor's theme issue editor for March 2012, Alon Neidich, interviewed Dr. Al Roth about the growing importance of paired kidney exchanges for incompatible patient-donor pairs.
The author argues that long-term trends point to a future for physician assistants and nurse practitioners as the principal front-line deliverers of primary care, with physicians focusing on managerial duties and specialty care.
When the tension between solidarity and individualism hardens into entrenched oppositional politics, attempts to widen health care coverage are stymied.
Health care professionals and those who teach them must be prepared to examine the implications of carbon dioxide emissions on human well-being and make decisive steps towards sustainability.
Physicians will have a greater impact on health if they advocate for changes needed to prevent illness and harm than if they simply patch up those who are sick or harmed.
Rebecca Lunstroth, JD, MA and Eugene Boisaubin, MD
Task-based small-group sessions may be more effective for teaching medical students concepts such as justice, resource allocation, and professionalism.
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.
Doctors and hospitals must stop being bystanders to food-related illness and begin to become role models and educators in the transition to healthful eating habits, just as they did in tobacco cessation.