'Becoming a Physician'-medical students get acquainted with disadvantaged populations, and practise sensitive and effective communication.

Background: The three-year pre-medical programme 'Becoming a Physician' focuses on different aspects of medical professionalism. Objectives are to increase awareness and sensitivity to disadvantaged populations, and practise sensitive effective communication skills.

Methods: The curriculum includes: (1) Visits to treatment centres for people with special needs, mental illnesses, substance abuse issues, physically or sexually abused, and prisoners.

Aggregation of qualitative studies--From theory to practice: Patient priorities and family medicine/general practice evaluations.

Objective: Aggregation (i.e., meta-ethnography or meta-synthesis) of qualitative studies remains relatively rare and controversial.

Development of a physician attributes database as a resource for medical education, professionalism and student evaluation.

In the light of the growing interest in professionalism and non-cognitive attributes in medical education, a focus group (FG) methodology was used to achieve a database of desired physician attributes. Ten FGs, consisting of medical faculty, service heads, residents, general practitioners, students and patients, took place, producing 169 desired attributes; further attributes were derived from a literature search, and the Mission and Vision Statement (MVS) of the authors' medical faculty. A total of 254 separate attributes finally emerged, after a process of combining and collapsing similar items.