Towards widening access to medicine

Dear Sir

Diversity at medical school would lead to a more culturally sensitive education process, vital in producing competent doctors capable of serving the UK's increasingly heterogeneous populations. Although much effort has concentrated towards widening access to medicine, disparity still occurs, and studies have shown that students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, certain ethnic groups, and those whose parents did not attend university are still less likely to apply to medical school (Greenhalgh et al. 2006; Ferguson et al. 2012).

As medical students, we believe that we are in a unique position to bridge this gap. As part of our Widening Participation Programme (WPP), we invited sixth form students from pre-selected schools in Newcastle to enter an essay competition on a medical subject. Of 25 entrants, we selected 15 best essays and invited the students to attend the WPP, a one-day event organised as part of the National Academic Medicine Student Conference (NAMSC) at Newcastle Medical School (April 2012). Of the 15 participants, 11 were of ethnic minority, 10 came from non-fee-paying schools and nine had parents who did not attend university.

Briefly, the NAMSC was an academic conference for medical students consisting of lectures and student presentations (morning) and workshops (afternoon) aimed to promote academic medicine. WPP participants were paired up with medical student ‘buddies’ and attended the conference's morning sessions. The buddies’ roles were (1) to help explain the content of lectures/presentations to the participants so as to inculcate interest in medicine and (2) to provide essential insider's knowledge on the experience of applying to/being at medical school. In the afternoon, we organised two workshops, separate from NAMSC workshops; one was a Q&A session on application process (organised by the Director of Medical Studies) aimed to encourage participants to apply to medical school, and another was a clinical skills demonstration, aimed to provide insights as to what students learn at medical school.

A post-event five-point Likert scale questionnaire demonstrated that all participants found the WPP to be useful in helping to decide on a medical career and the use of buddies was effective in stimulating interest in medicine. All agreed that they were more likely to apply for medicine after attending the event. Although short-term outcome indicates that the WPP was effective at widening access to medicine, we aim to follow-up this group of bright students to see if the WPP actually resulted in admission into medical school.