Closing the gap between professional teaching and practice

Papers p 709 Personal view p 743 Learning to be a doctor can be uniquely rewarding. Unlike other undergraduate study, clinical medicine has a practical edge such that students can directly experience the relevance of their academic work through their educational contact with patients. They also have the privilege of experiencing the range of human intellect, emotion, achievement, and failure embodied in the patients from whom they will learn. Finally, their positive interactions with patients reinforce the altruism that brought many of them into medicine. At its best, medical education can make students feel good about themselves and what they are learning, as well as preparing them for good professional practice. But if a gap exists between their clinical teaching and what they know and feel to be morally right the effects can be disastrous.1 #### Policy on the rights of patients in medical education For educational activities not part of clinical care: