Cargando…

Challenges In Widening Participation Outreach: Is Enough Being Done To Tackle The Under-Representation Of Low-Income Students In Medicine?

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...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Apampa, Akinyemi, Kubacki, Angela, Ojha, Utkarsh, Xiang, Jinpo
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Dove 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6830382/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31802965
http://dx.doi.org/10.2147/AMEP.S211895
_version_ 1783465771157946368
author Apampa, Akinyemi
Kubacki, Angela
Ojha, Utkarsh
Xiang, Jinpo
author_facet Apampa, Akinyemi
Kubacki, Angela
Ojha, Utkarsh
Xiang, Jinpo
author_sort Apampa, Akinyemi
collection PubMed
description 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.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-6830382
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2019
publisher Dove
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-68303822019-12-04 Challenges In Widening Participation Outreach: Is Enough Being Done To Tackle The Under-Representation Of Low-Income Students In Medicine? Apampa, Akinyemi Kubacki, Angela Ojha, Utkarsh Xiang, Jinpo Adv Med Educ Pract Review 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. Dove 2019-11-01 /pmc/articles/PMC6830382/ /pubmed/31802965 http://dx.doi.org/10.2147/AMEP.S211895 Text en © 2019 Apampa et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ 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 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/). 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 (https://www.dovepress.com/terms.php).
spellingShingle Review
Apampa, Akinyemi
Kubacki, Angela
Ojha, Utkarsh
Xiang, Jinpo
Challenges In Widening Participation Outreach: Is Enough Being Done To Tackle The Under-Representation Of Low-Income Students In Medicine?
title Challenges In Widening Participation Outreach: Is Enough Being Done To Tackle The Under-Representation Of Low-Income Students In Medicine?
title_full Challenges In Widening Participation Outreach: Is Enough Being Done To Tackle The Under-Representation Of Low-Income Students In Medicine?
title_fullStr Challenges In Widening Participation Outreach: Is Enough Being Done To Tackle The Under-Representation Of Low-Income Students In Medicine?
title_full_unstemmed Challenges In Widening Participation Outreach: Is Enough Being Done To Tackle The Under-Representation Of Low-Income Students In Medicine?
title_short Challenges In Widening Participation Outreach: Is Enough Being Done To Tackle The Under-Representation Of Low-Income Students In Medicine?
title_sort challenges in widening participation outreach: is enough being done to tackle the under-representation of low-income students in medicine?
topic Review
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6830382/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31802965
http://dx.doi.org/10.2147/AMEP.S211895
work_keys_str_mv AT apampaakinyemi challengesinwideningparticipationoutreachisenoughbeingdonetotackletheunderrepresentationoflowincomestudentsinmedicine
AT kubackiangela challengesinwideningparticipationoutreachisenoughbeingdonetotackletheunderrepresentationoflowincomestudentsinmedicine
AT ojhautkarsh challengesinwideningparticipationoutreachisenoughbeingdonetotackletheunderrepresentationoflowincomestudentsinmedicine
AT xiangjinpo challengesinwideningparticipationoutreachisenoughbeingdonetotackletheunderrepresentationoflowincomestudentsinmedicine