There will be many of you who will approach yet another report about equality and widening access to medicine in the same way that I approach the Peter Andre and Katie Price circus.
I don’t understand it, I don’t care about it and frankly I wouldn’t be that fussed if a gigantic foot dropped down on top of it.
I sympathise with this reaction as in recent months we have been deluged with reports, pronouncements and initiatives on this topic, not least from Alan Milburn’s summer report on widening access to the professions. Unfortunately much of this has been wrapped in the overbearing language of political correctness which makes you want to pull your hair out.
But, buried beneath this mountain of political spin lies a couple of serious points. It is true, as the BMA’s new report into the make up of medical school demonstrates, that as a profession we have an appalling track record of recruiting students from low income backgrounds.
Just one in seven medical students comes from this group, despite the government pouring £392 million into widening participation schemes in recent years. The glut of spending has resulted in an increase from the lowest groups of just 1.7% since 2003. Not exactly time for the party hats and the cava.
I imagine though that many of you again would have been left unmoved by this last paragraph, possibly because you suspect that what is coming next is a call for positive discrimination. Certainly our report suggests this view is filtering through to students, with a rising rate of applicants refusing to answer questions about their social status, possibly due to a fear they could end up being penalised if they are judged to be too wealthy.
Well, this isn’t what the BMA or I believe in. Positive discrimination is as unfair as it sounds - there is nothing positive about discriminating against anyone.
What instead needs to happen is for us to remove the barriers holding back low income students. Many of these lie at school level, well before application forms are even filled in.
Pupils from low income areas receive worse grades than their counterparts in more affluent districts and, perhaps linked to this fact, many automatically think a career in medicine isn’t for them. Another issue may lie in the career advice students get, as there is evidence of an inconsistency in the quality of these services.
Certainly, in my own experience, I didn’t feel I got much encouragement to go for medicine despite my grades. There of course other barriers, not least the increasing cost of a medical degree which all politicians appear to have genetic pre-disposition to ignore - despite medical students now facing a £37,000 debt bill after graduation.
To tackle these problems we don’t need phony positive discrimination schemes. We need to look at the school system and how it interacts with medical schools, especially in terms of career advice services. We need no more increases in tuition fees and someone in Whitehall to wake up to the debt problem that threatens to bury the ambitions of thousands of students with the brains but not the wallet to get into medical school. And we also need a proactive set of mentoring schemes - an area the BMA is looking to work on - aimed at raising the sights of children so that they believe a career in medicine is within their reach.
Tackling the under representation of low income students is therefore not a flag to be raised in the cause of political correctness. It is about something more real, more practical and more important - making sure we get the best talent into our hospitals and that everyone gets the chance to fulfil their potential.