3 research outputs found
Who do you think you are? Medical student socioeconomic status and intention to work in underserved areas
Social Inclusion or Social Engineering? The Politics and Reality of Widening Access to Medicine in the UK
Although driven by policy and investment, the available data suggests that, to date, UK
efforts to minimise the barriers into professions such as medicine have had mixed success.
We explore the myriad social, individual and structural reasons why the resources invested
in widening access (WA) activities have not significantly increased the representation of
applicants from lower socio-economic groups within medical schools. We discuss the
different discourses of widening access/increasing diversity in the UK context – notably
those of ‘social mobility’ and ‘increasing diversity to improve workforce efficiency’ – and how
these are interpreted and enacted “on the ground”. This includes examining the synergies
and tensions between widening access and maintaining quality, and the gap between
political directives and policy enactment within medical schools. We discuss if the different
discourses of widening access can be reconciled, and if so, whether this can be done in a
way to support widening access