Successfully widening access to medicine. Part 1: recruitment and admissions.

Abstract

Widening access programmes aim to create a more diverse and representative workforce. Some, but not all of these programmes are focused on increasing the representation from low socioeconomic backgrounds, and increasing social mobility.1 The Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission highlight the need for Russell Group universities to do more to increase fair access to higher education (HE) and the medical profession.1–4 A key recommendation of the commission’s most recent report, State of the Nation 2013,4 is ‘We urge the professions to open their doors to a wider pool of talent… We urge top universities to do the same by using contextual data’. The Medical Schools Council’s (MSC) newly formed Selecting for Excellence Executive Group5 aims to determine how to implement recommendations from these key reports regarding selection and widening access to medicine. A key aim of the BM6 widening access to medicine programme delivered by the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Southampton, a member of the Russell Group, is to increase representation of lower socioeconomic groups in its medical school while providing the appropriate level of education and support to enable these students to succeed in their studies and future profession, thereby increasing social mobility. Cleland et al.6 state that ‘When a society is mobile, individuals have an equal chance of progressing in terms of income or occupation’. For the past 12 years, the BM6 programme has been demonstrating many areas of best practice in accessing HE and medicine for students from low socioeconomic backgrounds. This paper aims to add to the limited existing literature in this area and illustrate key aspects of the BM6 programme’s recruitment and admissions process that supports students from low socioeconomic backgrounds in accessing medical school.