Electives in undergraduate health professions training: Opportunities and utility.

Elective courses, as the name implies, are the courses fundamentally optional in nature. Such courses are offered to students to allow them to have diversified and specific learning experiences in the area of interest, beyond fixed curricular boundaries. Though, elective courses started gaining importance in health professions training during last century, their full potential is still untapped. With the introduction of massive open online courses, more such courses are on offer. This perspective discusses the opportunities available to introduce elective courses as well as the opportunities provided by the elective courses to improve students' learning and help in their professional development.