Apampa, A; Kubacki, A; Ojha, U; Xiang, J
(2019)
Challenges In Widening Participation Outreach: Is Enough Being Done To Tackle The Under-Representation Of Low-Income Students In Medicine?
ADVANCES IN MEDICAL EDUCATION AND PRACTICE, 10.
pp. 917-923.
ISSN 1179-7258
https://doi.org/10.2147/AMEP.S211895
SGUL Authors: Kubacki, Angela
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Abstract
Widening Participation (WP) in medicine refers to all theory, activities and policy concerned with removing barriers to entering medical school for students from lower income and under-represented backgrounds. Medical schools and other institutions including; the Medical Schools Council, the Office for Fair Access, the Higher Education Funding Council for England, have been committed to improving Widening Participation for more than a decade. As senior medical students and academics, we have been actively involved with WP work at our respective medical schools and in conjunction with the British Medical Association (BMA) and the Medical Schools Council (MSC). Yet, we have observed over the years that the pace of change seems sometimes stuttering and stagnated. Here, we have investigated the reasons why there is still such a significant under-representation of students from lower income backgrounds in medicine. In order to make the medical student intake representative of the general population, the number of applications from lower income students would need to increase five-fold. This would require a great scaling up of WP outreach work. Critical analysis demonstrates that medical schools and the other key institutions in medical education have made many nominal commitments to WP, but have yet to make any commitments that are truly binding. This may be due to the institutions lack of belief in their own capacity to scale up WP Outreach sufficiently to achieve success. Ultimately binding commitments will be needed to secure a representative intake of medical students. In order for institutions to be willing to move towards such commitments, evidence-based success in WP must first be demonstrated through collaboration on specific projects that are scalable, sustainable and impactful.
Item Type: | Article | ||||||
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Additional Information: | This work is published and licensed by Dove Medical Press Limited. The full terms of this license are available at https://www.dovepress.com/terms.php and incorporate the Creative Commons Attribution - Non Commercial (unported, v3.0) License. By accessing the work you hereby accept the Terms. Non-commercial uses of the work are permitted without any further permission from Dove Medical Press Limited, provided the work is properly attributed. For permission for commercial use of this work, please see paragraphs 4.2 and 5 of our Terms. | ||||||
Keywords: | widening access, widening participation, outreach, medical school, social inequality, 1302 Curriculum And Pedagogy | ||||||
SGUL Research Institute / Research Centre: | Academic Structure > Institute of Medical & Biomedical Education (IMBE) Academic Structure > Institute of Medical & Biomedical Education (IMBE) > Centre for Clinical Education (INMECE ) |
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Journal or Publication Title: | ADVANCES IN MEDICAL EDUCATION AND PRACTICE | ||||||
ISSN: | 1179-7258 | ||||||
Dates: |
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Publisher License: | Creative Commons: Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 | ||||||
Web of Science ID: | WOS:000494281300001 | ||||||
URI: | https://openaccess.sgul.ac.uk/id/eprint/111425 | ||||||
Publisher's version: | https://doi.org/10.2147/AMEP.S211895 |
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