Widening participation: moving from diversity to inclusion

Widening participation in medicine in the UK can be seen as actively recruiting under-represented students into a system in which they are likely to face discrimination, harassment, and systematic educational disadvantage.123 We urgently need to shift the practice of widening participation from a myopic focus on recruitment and selection (“getting in”) to include the student experience (“getting through”), differential attainment, and career progression (“getting on”). [...]an approach would advance the widening participation discourse from “diversity in medicine,” which emphasises numbers of students, to “inclusion in medicine,” focusing on equity of experience and shared power. Instituting policies and procedures to effectively deal with racial harassment in medical education is an important step.4 But medical schools should also consider other strategies to redress institutional racism and promote inclusion, such as implementing broadly sampled assessments to reduce differential attainment5; achieving staff diversity and promoting visible role models and mentors67; critically reviewing how diversity and inclusion, as well as “race” more specifically, is taught in the curriculum8; diversifying the medical curriculum and teaching materials9; and supporting co-creation of educational polices, practices, and norms in which learner voices are valued.10 Competing interests: