Creating an inclusive curriculum in the UCL Medical School (podcast)

In this six-minute podcast, second year medical student Hope Chow talks about a project to diversify the UCL Medical School curriculum, alongside project leads Dr Faye Gishen & Dr Amali Lokugamage.

 Listen to the Podcast

 

Hope described why she got involved in the project:

"It’s not just my own identity which matters. Through placements, when we talked to patients who had really varied experiences with healthcare professionals, we saw that even though lots of them had really good things to say about the healthcare they received, there was so much injustice, so many stories of patients not having their symptoms taken seriously, maybe because of who they were. And not having their needs taken in to account by those they were meant to be able to trust. Through exploring these power imbalances, I wanted to see how we medical students, could become better professionals in the future." 

Dr Gishen and Dr Lokugamage share details of the plans to take diversity the curriculum:

“[This grant] is an opportunity to broaden our participation and include diversity within the curriculum. We’ve really tried to be very inclusive in the way we teach and we have tried to use case examples of people who are not your average white middle-class male or female... we've introduced scenarios where we look at refugee medicine and LGBT issues.”

“I think our colleagues are very excited about this project. We have a wonderful range of innovative clinical tutors producing and co-creating amazing materials and they are welcoming the mapping exercise.”

The team are one of six projects recently funded as part of the university's Liberating the Curriculum initiative which aims to challenge Eurocentric, male-dominated curricula at UCL and find ways of fairly representing marginalised voices in the mainstream curriculum, specifically black, queer, disabled and feminist contributions to knowledge. 

The project aspires to create a manifesto for the furthering of the Liberating the Curriculum aims and endeavours to act as a springboard for future ideas and innovations.