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Abstract
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This commentary aims to further explore the findings of the paper 'Yourself in all your forms': A grounded theory exploration of identity safety in medical students,1 by thinking about the impact of the interplay between identity and belongingness has on medical students from diverse backgrounds.
There has been a move to improve diversity within medicine by encouraging and supporting students from non-traditional backgrounds to apply for the course. The hope is that the future medical workforce will better represent the population it serves and improve patient care. Widening participation initiatives and gateway courses to medicine is showing encouraging signs that they are improving the diversity of students.2 This diverse cohort includes students from ethnic minority backgrounds, lower socio-economic backgrounds and students with disabilities.2 However, there is also evidence of higher attrition rates and lower academic scores in these non-traditional cohorts of students relative to their peers, a phenomenon known as 'differential attainment'.3-5 This has led to calls upon medical institutions and medical research to broaden the focus away from measuring progress based on simply increasing the numbers of students from diverse backgrounds to focusing on improving the equity of their experience.6
Research such as that undertaken by the authors of 'Yourself in all your forms' is an important step in the right direction. Diverse student experiences are described through the concepts of identity threat and identity safety and the impact these have on the learning environment. The authors then link this to student 'belongingness'. The authors highlight the roles of unwelcoming learning environments, a lack of diverse representation in senior roles (and thus a lack of role models), a lack of allyship from peers/colleagues and external socio-political threats. These are all seen to contribute to identity threats faced by students, which negatively impact students' sense of belonging, an important factor in student retention.7 Therefore, proactively addressing factors that contribute to identity threats will hopefully improve student retention and academic performance in students from diverse backgrounds and, in the process, reduce the awarding gap that is evident in medical education.
The authors also acknowledge that the pressure diverse students feel to change their behaviours to 'fit in' contributes to an identity threat, which impacts their behaviour in the learning environment. Academic socialisation,8 which refers to supporting students to 'fit in' to the dominant cultural norms of their institutions, is one way of improving belongingness, and this may help students succeed in the system as it currently operates. ...
Language: en |