Teaching the social sciences to undergraduate medical students.

An increasing number of medical schools have introduced undergraduate programs in the social sciences in an attempt to improve the ability of their graduates to communicate with patients and to meet their needs. However, teaching programs in the social sciences have often encountered varying degrees of student resistance, possibly because of their uncertain relevance for clinical practice, incongruity with the biomedical model, teachers' attitudes, and poorly defined educational goals. The objective of this essay is to analyze the causes of students' resistance to the social sciences and to identify the features of a teaching program responsive to their needs.