Patient suicide: model for medical student teaching and mourning.

The molding of the physician's role and identity takes place during crucial clinical years in medical training. This professional identity is influenced by experiences and models. The suicide of a medical student's patient provides a natural experiment for observing and working with important aspects of the developmental process of physicians in integrating the affective component of clinical work and learning. The facilitation of grief and mourning in a medical student and his five colleagues assigned to the same outpatient psychiatric rotation are important aspects of the clinical, educational, and professional developmental issues raised by the patient's death.