Invoking one’s medical training when presenting an opinion on a topic about which one has no expertise is simply cloaking personal one’s views in the mantle of respectability that being a doctor provides.
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.
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.
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.
Jonathan M. Metzl, MD, PhD and Dorothy E. Roberts, JD
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.
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.
Unless we build bridges between our clinical work with patients and the public health mission that Virchow prescribed for us, we are doomed to futility in our efforts to help our patients.
The Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program has trained 1,200 physicians over 45 years to be agents of change in their communities, medical education, research, and politics.