Project Background

The lack of mandatory racially aware medical training in the LCME guidelines has resulted in many medical professionals disregarding or perpetuating racial inequalities in clinical settings.

Currently, the LCME creates a standardized curriculum for the first four years of medical school. Yearly, the LCME publishes a guide of standards to help make sure curriculum and practices are universalized. Specifically, Standard 7, Curricular Content list, outlines a recommended curriculum. However, out of nine of the overarching curriculums, only one, section 7.6, closely resembles any sort of anti-racist curriculum that medical schools can optionally opt into. Specifically, in section 7.6, this guideline gives educators the option to teach students to recognize bias in themselves and in the health care delivery process but does not require educators to teach students to identify, understand, or even address social inequalities in clinical settings and mitigate systemic racism in medicine.

Deliverables & Impact

Between my Literature analysis of medical schools, lecture analysis of curriculum lectures, and interviews of medical students, a lack of action towards any sort of anti-racists pedagogy emerges as a theme between all three. A majority of medical universities had no anti-racists curricula represented and medical students similarly were not getting the appropriate education formally or informally. Many of my interviews with medical students also confirmed my findings in my lecture analysis. Two of my medical student interviews mentioned how it made “no sense that race would make someone more susceptible to disease, although economic and social factors play a significant role.” and how another “recalled sitting in a lecture—one of five Black students in the room—and hearing that Black people are inherently more prone to disease.”. These findings reconfirm the biologically salient frameworks race is being brought up as in medical classrooms and how students of color are having to deal with the brunt of this set up. While it cannot be overstated that my lecture analysis shows the importance of the didactic materials, the marginalization of student experience at the expense of faculty presentation of lecture facts emphasizes how students are utilized in the professionalization process. Moreover, my interviews and the aid of my lecture analysis draws attention to the way in which many educators’ implementation of a curricular mandate to teach about social inequalities may give way to social inequalities of their own. In the face of this research, I am urging Policy makers, medical educators, and students to rethink the medical curriculum’s stance on racism and actual patient centered care. LCME Section 7.6 Guideline needs to be a mandatory guideline that is rooted in anti-racist ideology and does not just teach students about systematic racism, but also how to think radically about eliminating racist harm to specifically address how this can be implemented into practice.