Being a role model for preventive action

This article highlights the crucial role of clinicians as role models in fostering preventive action within medical education. Role modeling is a powerful mechanism in workplace learning, contributing both to medical students' professional identity formation and to their self-efficacy through observational (vicarious) learning. Rather than learning from a single exemplary physician, medical students construct a “mosaic” of role models, drawing on diverse professionals who each demonstrate different competencies. This underscores the importance of exposing medical students to varied clinical perspectives. Despite the growing importance of prevention—driven by aging populations, increasing multimorbidity, and health inequities—medical students report limited exposure to role models who explicitly demonstrate preventive care. Preventive actions are often underrepresented or remain implicit in daily clinical practice, partly because curative care is prioritized and population-level activities are less visible. Additionally, clinicians may not recognize or articulate their own preventive efforts as role modeling opportunities. To address this gap, the article introduces a framework describing preventive action at both individual and population levels, structured around three steps: identification, intervention, and evaluation. Building on this, it outlines how clinicians can model preventive care effectively using four phases of role model learning: attention, retention, reproduction, and motivation. Practical strategies include making preventive actions visible, explaining underlying reasoning, creating opportunities for practice, and demonstrating outcomes. The article concludes that deliberate and explicit role modeling of prevention, combined with active student engagement, can strengthen learning and support the integration of preventive care as a core component of medical professionalism.