As practitioners move farther along in medicine, we often forget how different our lexicon actually is. In forgetting that, we forget something even more important. Although we live in the hospital and see sick babies, broken bones, vaginal bleeding, and bloody cuts all the time, this is often the first and maybe only time patients and families see what the bowels of a hospital are like.

The hospital depersonalizes most things, medicalizes them, and proceduralizes them; by design, it turns the dramatic into the routine.

"Sex Ed by Brown Med" is a student-run elective that has become one of the school's most popular. It provides students with the opportunity to gain on-the-ground experience while becoming empathetic and effective stakeholders in middle-schoolers' health, education, and well-being. The program provides an opportunity for medical students to test-drive the key skills that will determine their success as physicians: communication, flexibility, patient-doctor collaboration, and "knowledgeable empathy."