The Medical Schools Council welcomes this guidance for medical students on racial harassment. MSC plans to use the helpful recommendations in the report in our ongoing work to support medical schools in addressing the issue of the ethnic award gap. One key aspect of this work is ensuring that the learning environment is supportive to all learners, no matter what their background is. Improved reporting mechanisms for racial harassment will help students feel supported and help medical schools to take action to improve the education and training they provide.
In 2020 MSC will hold engagement events with medical students from across the UK to get their views on how the ethnic award gap can be improved. As well as looking at reporting systems we will ask for their views on a number issues including whether they feel medical schools should provide bystander training to all students, whether the medical school curriculum needs to be diversified and their own ideas of what could be improved within medical schools to tackle the award gap. MSC will also continue to bring together medical schools to share best practise and ideas for addressing differential attainment.
Individual medical schools will need to decide whether to officially sign up to the charter in discussion with their students; MSC, as a membership organisation cannot make this decision for them.
The full guidance can be found here.