Successfully widening access to medicine. Part 2: Curriculum design and student progression

Curtis, Sally; Blundell, C.J.; Platz, Christine; Turner, Linda

doi:10.1177/0141076814538787

Cited by 15 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 9 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The Selection phase involves engagement with the "gatekeepers" of medical education, namely the medical school admissions deans, to increase the success rates of WAMS applicants by considering "contextual data" and using other more holistic information in accessing candidates' suitability for medical school. This is exemplified in the use of extended medical programmes as well as with access courses for "mature" applicants [32,[35][36][37]. Medical schools set high admissions standards as they want to produce the best doctors [17].…”

Section: Figure 2 Frequency Of Wams Approachesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This is especially important for students leaving rural or isolated communities for a new and foreign environment [15]. Such programmes may involve providing an "extended 6-year programme" or a "year 0" where by WAMS students are given more time to adapt to the new environment, gain confidence and "embed from below" [32,[35][36][37]. The Transition phase is closely followed by the final phase, retention and completion, which aims to increase their chances of completing the course and graduating as doctors [15,30,[35][36][37].…”

Section: Wams Approachesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These include meeting an agreed level of socioeconomic depravation as well as showing academic potential and commitment, as determined by school teachers and/or mental amplitude tests [8,13,15,[31][32][33][34][35][36]. This is crucial as it is hoped that teachers would be able to identify capable students who may not be performing up to their true potential due to individual and environmental circumstances [8,13,[31][32][33][34][35][36]. Apart from fairness, selecting the most committed applicants may allow for limited resources to be focused on the WAMS students with the best chances of being admitted into medical school [34].…”

Section: Wams Approachesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Content of these sessions include: introduction to medicine as a career choice (with or without work-placement opportunities), awareness of application requirements, coaching on entrance tests, CVs and interview practice (clearing key hurdles). In addition, most of the programmes also targeted non-cognitive aspects such as improving confidence and self-image as part of overcoming dispositional barriers typically faced by WAMS students [1,8,13,17,[31][32][33][34][35][36]. Led and delivered by a combination of staff and medical students.…”

Section: Wams Approachesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Whilst some WAMS are led and delivered primarily by a dedicated team of university staff [8,[30][31][35][36], others are led by medical student volunteers with supervision from university staff [13,31,[33][34]. The advantage of programmes being led by medical students is the reduction of costs as well as the ability to assign each WAMS applicant a medical student mentor throughout the academic year leading up to applications [8,13,[31][32][33][34][35][36]. Remaining resources can be focused on designing a short (1-2 week) intensive programme to consolidate students' preparation [8,13,15,31,[33][34].…”

Section: Wams Approachesmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 4 more Smart Citations

Stakeholder perspectives of widening access initiatives to medical school in the UK: A scoping review

Wong

Glen

Williams

2019

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Background: Widening access initiatives to medical school (WAMS) have had mixed success. One reason may be the competing interests of different stakeholder groups involved. The aim of this scoping review was to explore stakeholder perspectives of widening access initiatives to medical school in the UK. Methods: Scoping review, including the use of data sources from published literature from 1998 to 2018, CINAHL, Applied Social Sciences Index and Abstracts, ProQuest Education Collection, PsychINFO, PubMed, key journals and citation tracking. Results: The review focused on the 12 papers which comprise 11 studies and can be categorised into: 8 studies on Widening Access initiatives done in the UK, 2 studies on stakeholder perspectives only and 1 generic review on “best practices” in WAMS. The 4 main areas targeted by the WAMS initiatives in this review include: outreach, selection, transition, retention and completion. They also display several key features which could have contributed to their success and sustainability, namely: committed personnel and resources, selection of suitable WAMS applicants, focused sessions based on needs of students, led and delivered by a combination of staff and medical students, utilisation of technology and social media and data collection and feedback. The stakeholders identified are as follows: students, parents, school teachers, medical schools’ admissions deans, WAMS facilitators, policy makers, hospital management and the public. Their interests and perspectives have been tabulated. Conclusions: WAMS in the UK have come a long way since their inception, but much remains to be done in achieving their desired results more broadly. As more resources are being allocated to WAMS around the country, a more thorough exploration of stakeholder perspectives and interests may be helpful in understanding how these programmes work.

show abstract

Section: Figure 2 Frequency Of Wams Approachesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Wams Approachesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Wams Approachesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Wams Approachesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Wams Approachesmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Stakeholder perspectives of widening access initiatives to medical school in the UK: A scoping review

Wong

Glen

Williams

2019

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Social Inclusion or Social Engineering? The Politics and Reality of Widening Access to Medicine in the UK

Alexander

Cleland

2018

Achieving Equity and Quality in Higher Education

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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 contextnotably 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.

show abstract

Reconceptualising fair access to highly academically selective universities

et al. 2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The higher education regulator for England has set challenging new widening access targets requiring universities to rethink how merit is judged in admissions. Universities are being encouraged to move away from the traditional meritocratic equality of opportunity model of fair access, which holds that university places should go to the most highly qualified candidates irrespective of social background, in accordance with the principles of procedural fairness. Instead, they are being asked to move towards what we term the meritocratic equity of opportunity model, which holds that prospective students’ qualifications should be judged in light of the socioeconomic circumstances in which these were obtained to enhance distributive fairness, a practice known in the UK as contextualised admissions. In this paper, we critically discuss the theoretical underpinnings of these two competing perspectives on fair access and review the existing empirical evidence base, drawing together for the first time insights from our ESRC and Nuffield Foundation funded studies of fair access to highly academically selective universities in England. We argue that reconceptualising fair access in terms of distributive fairness rather than procedural fairness offers a more socially just set of principles on which to allocate valuable but scarce places at the most academically selective universities in England, unless or until such time as the vertical stratification of higher education institutions is reduced or eliminated entirely.

show abstract

Successfully widening access to medicine. Part 2: Curriculum design and student progression

Cited by 15 publications

References 9 publications

Stakeholder perspectives of widening access initiatives to medical school in the UK: A scoping review

Stakeholder perspectives of widening access initiatives to medical school in the UK: A scoping review

Social Inclusion or Social Engineering? The Politics and Reality of Widening Access to Medicine in the UK

Reconceptualising fair access to highly academically selective universities

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About