Held on the 1st June 2018 at the University of Manchester; The Manchester Meeting Place on Sackville Street Campus, ML3AL
Present: Margot Turner (MT), Jon Ward (JW), Valerie Farnsworth (VF), Helen Orton (HO), Rebecca Farrington (RF), Enam Haque (EH), Manbinder Sidhu (MS), Cathy Williamson (CW) and Rachel Lindley (RL)
Minute Taker: Enam Haque (EH)
1. Apologies: Riya George (RG), Barry Ewart (BE), Shuangyu Li (SL), Samantha Hibbits (SH), Maryanne Freer (MF), Aarti Bansal (AB), Candan Ertubey (CE), Davinder Singh (DS), Adrian Barrowdale (AB), Liz Forty (LF) and Helen Bintley (HB).
2. Minutes from the last meeting: AGREED as a true record of the meeting. The minutes and action plans were reviewed and the following key discussions occurred.
- MT suggested that we should change the focus of the meeting to making it an opportunity to share practice and celebrate achievements, rather than simply focusing on action plans
- This would increase engagement and takes away the feeling of guilt, if action plans are not met
- MT and RG attended Academy of Medical Educators Conference (AoME) meeting and set up a stall – this was well received and contact details were obtained from interested parties
- A stall could be at ASME as Riya is a Director’s of ASME.
- JW liaising with CBM in Birmingham and to work with them on developing a diversity workshop, to embed diversity into the curriculum.
- RF mentioned that RL is part of heads of teaching and can disseminate information there
- HO emailed the membership working group to start a formal strategy for liaising with and attracting new members
Action points:
- RG to explore DIMAH stall at ASME 2018/ 2019.
- Meeting of membership working group to be arranged.
- MT to send around the pdf of the flyer for the conference that was used previously so we can share locally.
3. Membership and finance update
- Pete Leftwick (PL), our Treasurer, has unfortunately resigned.
- MT mentioned that 2 new members have been recruited to DIMAH
- There is currently £1000 in the account, with £500 funds available to continue maintenance of website
- DIMAH would need to charge attendees at DIMAH conference, to cover costs of 2 years’ worth of websites. (£2000). MT looking at other funding streams as well.
- Need to create a generic business case and consider putting forward to RCGP and RCN. HO could explore RCN and EH RCGP
- MT mentioned the conference would be a good way to showcase our work, and use a platform to get further funding.
- UKCC, CW is on the committee as treasurer. Status currently being reviewed. Meeting accountants soon. This has to be finalised before UKCC become a fund awarding body
- VF explored possibility with connecting with university equality and diversity leads in university. MT advised good to connect with them if they have an interest in education as well.
- RF mentioned Dawn Edge involved in differential attainment for UoM faculty – she can discuss with her.
- Treasurer role discussed- maintaining spreadsheet finances, having ban card in name, paying for website, chasing up membership. HO has offered to take over role of treasurer. She will liaise with PL for handover, to commence in August 2018.
Action points:
- HO to take over Treasurer role from August 2018
- To create a generic business case for funding
4. DIMAH website and social media
- Twitter chat discussed. EH to restart this, after checking with other members of working group. Twitter archiving needed and EH to explore.
- Podcast- could do as a conversation on a topic around diversity. Has to be short. 2 minutes max. We discussed we could offer this at the conference but need to see about timing as conference schedule develops.
- MT to design some questions for the podcast and then send to group.
- Could also do podcast with attendees at conference
- MT advised to summarise CPD activity and put on the website, as an educational resource and to drive learning.
- Could do members only discussion board on website- EH to explore with John. UKCC do this already. – could be way of attracting members.
- Can archive material. John also works for UKCC so handy.
Action points:
- EH to restart Twitter chat
- EH to archive twitter discussions onto website
- MT to send questions for members to consider podcasts
- EH to explore members only discussion board on website, with Jon Prendergast
5. DIMAH conference planning and preparation
- MT gave an overview of the previous conference hosted by Medical School Council (MSC).
- All medical schools brought in posters and then there was small group facilitation. Also discussion on assessment and diversity. Successful. Good feedback. But only one room and so noisy.
- GMC were very present, which drove their engagement with DIMAH.
Publicity
- To invite all 36 medical schools in UK
- Aiming for 108 attendees
Action points:
- MT and EH to disseminate advert to all previous attendees. To enquire whether RG has previous attendees contact details.
Venue
University of Liverpool is sponsoring the conference for free, with lunch provided. This also includes the following rooms:
1. Gallery room for 150 people – suitable for talks
2. South atrium for 150 for lunch
3. Clarence room for 40
4. Water house room 22
5. Chandler room 24
6. Langra room 16
Charge
- Each institute is required to bring 2 staff and 1 student.
- £50 charge for each institute.
- Organisers are not required to pay.
Posters
- To be sent and put up, but not needed to be presented this time
- Inclusive approach, so no competition for posters.
- VF mentioned ipad app for e-posters- learning tool box. This could then be discussed at tables. Might engage students more.
Action points:
- HO will look at whether posters can be put on boards in the gallery
Stalls
- No charge
Content for the conference:
Topic is Collaboration and Diversity
Structure
- Speaker
- workshops
- posters/lunch
- workshops
- speaker
Speakers
- Key note speaker- MT suggested Katherine Woolf from UCL- she has done research on BAME attainment gap and student experience. Good to have someone with visible research presence.
- MT also suggested students as key note speakers. E.g. Sarah Lesoi- student at St George’s, the new NUS Women’s Officer is. Also a student from St Georges could talk about his artwork in the Tate, on being a black student.
Action points:
- MT to contact Katherine Woolf and students
Workshops
- workshops to be run twice
- Can get people to sign up via Eventbrite – first come first served
- GMC have done workshops on BAME attainment gap- they can do a workshop
- VF suggested bias workshop- goldfish bowl format
- VF also suggested a tool to facilitate small group discussion – ‘to learn together and develop creative solutions’: www.ketso.com
Suggested themes for collaboration for change:
1. Humanities
2. Student Experience
3. Attainment gap. – GMC CAN DELIVER THIS. Link to student experience.
4. Curriculum development/change
5. Staff training
6. Communication
7. IPL: Inter-professional learning.
8. Inclusion and health
Action points:
- MT to ask DIMAH membership for workshop ideas- then decide on plan, including student involvement.
- Members to submit an abstract for a workshop idea, based on the AMEE template
6. Student membership in meetings
- Conference would be opportunity for students to give their perspective on DIMAH – can do feedback form for ideas from them as a starting point
- RL suggested creating a virtual network.
- MT suggested considering involving the NUS in the future.
7. Continuing Professional Development: MT Differential Attainment
- A summary of the discussion is outlined in the appendix of the minutes.
8. Any other business
- JW to look at creating a DIMAH competition.
- CPD to be incorporated more into meetings.
- DIMAH would like to thank the University of Manchester for hosting the meeting and for their warm hospitality.
- DIMAH would also like to thank Pete Leftwick (former Treasurer) for his valuable contribution to DIMAH over the past few years.
Action points:
- Members to email with suggestions for CPD
Next Meeting:
- Thursday 26th July London at King’s College London.
- Thursday 27th September University of Liverpool- to visit conference venue (please note this date has changed.)
Appendix 1: CPD Discussion
CPD: BAME Attainment Gap In Medical Education
University of Manchester. Friday 1st June 2018
This is a summary of the discussion on this topic.
Margot mentioned that the GMC were interested in research on this topic, building on work in Sheffield and Plymouth.
She wanted the discussion to focus on the following 3 questions:
1. What do we think are issues for BAME students?
2. How does undergraduate teaching content disadvantage BAME undergraduate and postgraduate students?
3. Challenges of research
What do we think are issues for BAME students?
The following issues were discussed:
- Issue of lack of social capital and social networks
- BAME students are more likely to live at home, and so miss out on a lot of the social activities at university. Also pragmatic issues of travel and settling in.
- They are more likely to transfer from another degree to study medicine
- Perceived stereotyping of BAME students during OSCEs
- They may have other commitments such as being a career at home
- They have to work harder to fit the model of an ideal doctor
- Colonial history plays a part
- MT found in her study that black students are more isolated in medicine, than other groups.
- They are also treated worse by university staff, such as security.
- Few institutes have guidelines in place for different religious group- disadvantages BAME students
- Muslim female students particularly have a negative experience on wards
- Consultants on wards can’t pronounce names and adopt English name for students
- There are micro aggressions in the work and university environment which GMC and other professional bodies need to address
- Students need to have better resilience training to cope with the rise in racism in society. They may encounter this on the wards or in primary care.
- MT has embraced diversity in St George’s – she created a wall for black history month, and is now promoting the wind rush generation
- Could also look at international students- mentoring work would help, rather than reinforcing by keeping them in the same group
- Some international students go back to different environment- so need to consider alternative exams
How does teaching content disadvantage BAME students?
The following issues were discussed:
- The learning style in medical school may not suit BAME students. They may suit written based learning
- There is prejudicial material is in teaching
- Africa is often referred to a country
- BAME groups, however, are supporting each other for revision practice
- What a doctor looks and acts like is a challenge for BAME students, and is not covered well in programmes
- Need tutors to be culturally sensible
- Curriculum NHS centric- so excludes international students
- Need to incorporate diversity issues into staff training- how to tackle racist patients, pushing resilience in the workplace
Challenges of research
- What is it that we are looking at
- Need to ask GMC what questions they want addressing
- Need to know if GMC will fund
- Need to be aware that BAME is a broad category, and there is a lot of diversity within it.
- For example, richer BAME students will do better than poorer ones
- Data collection and qualitative discourse needed for different groups would help to address this
- GMC want an answer. Hard to give an answer.
- DIMAH to capture the voices
- Capture in lots of institutes
- Gives the students a voice
- Could produce a toolkit from the work
- GMC could help link DIMAH with other partners for the study
- “The conversation”- MS suggested submitting report to them to disseminate
Action Points:
- MT, MS and RG agreed to undertake a Literature review- DATE TBC. They will devise research questions for qualitative research from this.
- Group involved in discussion today have agreed for discussion notes to be shared on website. EH to put on members only section once notes finalised.
