How to Enable Medical Students to Develop a Vision of Themselves as Future Role Models?

The conceptConcepts of a role model has long been considered as an important componentComponent of professional growth. Role modeling happens in formal, informal, and hidden curriculumCurriculum in all educationalEducational settings. Although some concerns and reservations have been expressed about the vaguenessVagueness of standards, likelihood of unethical behavior of negative role models and the danger of mere imitations, there are a plethoraPlethora of literature on positive impacts of role modeling and the conceptConcepts is underpinned by important educationalEducational theories such as Social Cognitive Learning Theory and CriticalCritical and Transformative Reflective Learning. This chapterChapter is based upon the author’s experientialExperiential learning in, and criticalCritical reflections on, various and interrelated studies on professionalism and socialization of medical and dental students into the cultureCultures and norms of medicineMedicine and dentistry conducted by himself and his colleagues. The various aspects of the conceptConcepts are revisited and the competing views are compared. This chapter proposes a distinction between three conceptsConcepts of past, present, and future role models. It introduces a model for using these three conceptsConcepts to enhance professional education and finally argues that installing and operationalizing these conceptsConcepts in the facultyFaculty developmentDevelopments programs and student professional training schedules, would increase the promising positive effects of role modeling in medical education.