- Course: MB21 MB ChB
- Unit: 3D – Diversity, disability and disadvantage helical theme
- Authors: Dr Joseph Hartland
- Contact details: jo.hartland@bristol.ac.uk
The issue that we identified
It was identified by staff and students that although it is important to integrate discussions of race and ethnicity into all of our curriculum there also needed to exist a space where the intersection of race, racism and medicine was discussed specifically. This would allow students to become mor aware of the subject and better employ anti-racist medicine in their studies going forwards.
Actions
As a result we created a day in Year 1 of the MB ChB MB21 course which focused on teaching that explored racism in healthcare and inequalities faced by racially marginalised groups. The purpose of this was to prompt students to reflect on their knowledge of racism, stereotypes and biases they might hold, and to empower the students to be anti-racist in their approach to medicine.
Teaching was delivered by peers from the BAME Medical Student Group and guest lecturers with either lived experience of racism or who are experts in the field of the health inequality explored. This was a mixture of synchronus and asynchronus teaching, supported by a Sway document that can be found here. The timetable for the day with ILOs is available here:
Impacts
Feedback from students and speakers has been positive. It has created a place early in the curriculum for a difficult subject to be explored by people with the knowledge and understanding to do so. 3rd Sector organisations and people speaking about their lived experience of racism have valued having a platform to speak to students. BAME Medical student group and Year 1 reps were pleased with the content of the day.
What we have learned
The opportunity to frankly raise an important topic and bring in the voices of people seldom heard in society, let alone within medical curriculums.
The day is an intense one, and not all students undertake the asynchronous teaching. Year 1 reps report students struggling with the volume of content in the context of wider curriculum. Spreading the teaching across 2 half days may be more affective.