Integrative Collaborative Care: A patient-centered model that endorses the active participation of several healthcare disciplines and professions.  An approach to treatment that involves ongoing collaboration among the required health service providers, patients, their families and caregivers, and the community, where the patients are both the focal point and full partner in the overall effort.

Cultural Competence: Sensitivity and responsibility to ethnic, social, and cultural identity which are integral to effective, comprehensive healthcare. Promotion of awareness of how age, gender, spiritual beliefs and other factors affect the interaction between physician and patient, encouraging the healthcare worker to be cognizant of terminology and presentation of recommendations that may be tailored to promote optimal patient outcomes.

Clinical Sensitivity: The ability to express compassion in clinical interactions may be the single greatest tool for overall healing. Both an internal and external practice for the care provider and using a "physician know thyself" approach, students can learn emotional sensitivity and interpersonal communication skills that will enrich the clinical experience for both the patient and themselves.

Technological Innovation in Healthcare: The very nature of the practice of medicine requires that doctors learn and retain enormous amounts of data as well as possess interpersonal skills. Staying up-to-date with the ever-increasing scientific findings is equally as important as maintaining compassion and humanism in the daily interaction with patients and colleagues. From eLearning to gaming, technology based learning has the potential to strengthen student and physician retention of facts required to teach cultural competence, practice empathetic communication skills, and provide opportunities to mature decision making in areas, such as ethics, diagnostics, and triage.

Increased services to the Underserved: The global shortage of healthcare professionals is broadly recognized as a serious concern. In the course of medical education, emphasis can be placed on the importance of providing medical care in communities and countries where there are shortages.

Decreasing the Brain Drain: Balancing the Global Distribution of Healthcare Professionals: Graduates who do not return to their homeland to practice medicine sometimes foster a so-called brain drain that can have devastating consequences, in some instances. To increase the number of physicians worldwide and to curtail the brain drain of physicians, it will be necessary to expand medical recruitment opportunities to more students around the world and encourage newly trained physicians to return to their homeland and become pillars of their communities. Educational institutions can help by ensuring that international students have the requisite knowledge to succeed in their medical training.

The Four Pillars and Two Guideposts set the stage for a much needed revitalization and compass correction to medical education.