VICDOC Autumn 2023 - Magazine - Page 48
SO HOW DO WE PROMOTE SOCIOECONOMIC
DIVERSITY IN OUR MEDICAL SCHOOLS?
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Associate Professor Annette Mercer
believes that early and continued
support is the key. Having been heavily
involved in UWA’s now discontinued
Broadways program, she explains that
by engaging with underrepresented
high schools, bringing students
together, providing logistical support
throughout the (then) UMAT,
interviews and university transition,
and reserving a small number of
places in the course for Broadway
students (without lowering the entry
requirements) the program was able
to see many disadvantaged students
become doctors. The participants
performed as well as their peers, with
one alumni, Dr Catherine Nguyen,
awarded the AMA gold medal for
achieving the top aggregate marks over
the four years of her degree. She, like
many medical students from lower
SES areas, planned to return to her
community; many of which make
up the outer metropolitan areas
which traditionally see medical
workforce shortages.
Our outer metropolitan and low SES
communities desperately need quality
doctors who can staff their hospitals
and clinics and effectively connect
with their patients.
Socioeconomically disadvantaged
populations are at greater risk of
poor health and tend to be less
involved in medical decision making,
hence making up a large number
of admissions and representing a
vulnerable population in our hospitals.
Supporting a new generation of
doctors who are diverse beyond the
frame of gender provides an invaluable
opportunity to better distribute the
medical workforce and ensure that all
patients can be cared for by doctors
who understand their experiences
and values. To achieve this, we need
medical schools and specialty colleges
to recognise the barriers faced by low
SES students and work to break them
down in the same way as for other
underrepresented groups. It may be
by tweaking admission processes to
be more equitable towards low SES
students, implementing programs like
UWA’s Broadway program, better
distributing scholarship funding or a
combination of all three. Perhaps one
day soon, every young girl can look
in the mirror and see a future doctor,
regardless of the size of her piggy bank.
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