Roles, quandaries, and remedies: teaching professional boundaries to medical students.

This article conceptualizes a predictable set of tensions that medical students experience in their new roles with patients on clinical clerkships: empathy versus over-identification, objectivity versus avoidance, collaboration versus coercion, and self-confidence versus "special-ness." These tensions are framed in a developmental context for students and are used to highlight potential boundary difficulties. The role of supervision in teaching students and other beginning trainees about possible boundary issues is discussed.