Abstract
Major racial disparities continue to exist in our healthcare education, from the underrepresentation of ethnic minorities when teaching about clinical signs to health management in primary and secondary care. A multi-centre group of students discuss what needs to change in medical education to cultivate physicians who are better prepared to care for patients of all backgrounds. We argue that the accurate portrayal of race in medical education is a vital step towards educating medical students to consider alternative explanations to biology when considering health inequities.
Highlights
Two events have so far defined 2020: the COVID-19 (Coronavirus disease 2019) pandemic and the death of George Floyd
Eye-Opener higher COVID-19 mortality rate in BAME communities, a government official in the UK claimed that BAME individuals are “not taking the pandemic seriously” and suggested they are to blame for the spread of COVID-19 [12]
Medical students are taught that physiological measures such as spirometry values [39] and glomerular filtration rates (GFR) [40] should have a racial “adjustment”
Summary
Two events have so far defined 2020: the COVID-19 (Coronavirus disease 2019) pandemic and the death of George Floyd. Eye-Opener higher COVID-19 mortality rate in BAME communities, a government official in the UK claimed that BAME individuals are “not taking the pandemic seriously” and suggested they are to blame for the spread of COVID-19 [12] Does this perspective overlook the societal and structural factors—housing status, types of job, and modes of travel to name a few—that have predisposed BAME individuals to increased risk, but it is this type of thoughtlessness and racist stereotyping mentioned above that perpetuates institutional racism [13]. Despite its importance and its demonstrable role in perpetrating health inequalities, there has been a noticeable lack of attention on if and how institutional racism could be perpetuated by medical schools This is a broad topic that includes admission practices, classroom dynamics, diversity within faculty, content of taught material and the attitudes of teachers, to name but a few. This article will aim to showcase how race is conceptualised, and how it is taught and examined during medical school
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