AMA Journal of Ethics

Selected ideas in C. Donald Combs and P. Ford Combs’ article, “Emerging Roles of Virtual Patients in the Age of AI,” are further considered.

Awareness of one’s own interests is critical to successfully engaging in global health immersions.

Short-term experiences in global health are common ways trainees engage in global health activities. Professional societies take active roles in addressing these ethical challenges.

With properly designed programs, universities can offer transformative benefits to patients, educators, and students.

Almost all allopathic medical schools in the United States allow students to participate in global health.

If not planned and executed thoughtfully, “immersions” might not provide much benefit to communities they seek to serve.

Global health outreach programs can risk benefitting students from resource-rich areas of the world more than the patients in resource-poor areas of the world. This month’s episode of Ethics Talk explores an alternative to academic health center-based health outreach programs.

Within the United States, many “immersions” happen in student-run indigent care clinics that serve vulnerable populations.

In the past decade, more students than ever entered medical school with the desire, if not the expectation, of participating in meaningful global health experiences.

Case-based teaching, longitudinal application, and training in ethical deliberation can better prepare physicians to responsibly prescribe and manage opioids.