Widening participation (WP) in higher education (HE) aims to make the sector accessible and inclusive to students regardless of identity or background, improve social mobility, and reduce inequalities. Despite a wide range of initiatives aimed at fostering fair access to HE, outcomes for WP students continue to be worse than their more privileged counterparts.
This is particularly stark in medical education. Medicine is classed as an elite profession, traditionally dominated by white, male, middle- or upper-class people, often from medical families. Some advances to diversify the profession have succeeded, but only 4% of medics come from a working-class background, and these doctors will experience an average class pay gap of £3,640.
Medical student activism, such as the #LiveableNHSBursary campaign, has highlighted how financial and structural barriers embedded within the national medical curriculum negatively impact WP students’ mental health, academic achievement, and career progression.
Most WP in Medicine activities and research currently focus on fair access, but the barriers to success, once candidates are admitted to medical school, are under-researched. This research will critically examine financial and structural barriers to success in medical education to develop an evidence base for change in HE and medical education policy and practice.
Major duties
- Design and carry out a literature review according to a brief
- Critically review the results of the literature review to identify gaps in knowledge and inform future research
- Contribute to research outputs as a co-author, such as a blog and/or journal article