24 November 2020
RCEM is proud to represent a diverse speciality of 10,000 clinicians working in the specialty of Emergency Medicine. We were delighted to contribute to this timely piece of research commissioned by the GMC examining how medical royal colleges could support Black, Asian and minority ethnic doctors[1] in their specialty training.
We have known for some time now about differential attainment and how it manifests at medical school and persists throughout specialty training. Earlier this year RCEM carried out an internal review of our ethnicity data and identified an attainment gap, this is now an area of priority for our newly formed Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Committee.
This report makes an important contribution to understanding how we can change our training practices to address the ethnic attainment gap. We must foster a more inclusive and supportive training environment in order to level the playing field for our Black, Asian and minority ethnic doctors. We welcome the pragmatic interventions outlined in this report and will be working to adopt them into our training practices.
Differential attainment is a systemic issue and the causes of it are multifactorial and complex. Addressing this problem requires strong leadership from the medical college community. Now is the time to face the facts and take a proactive approach to ensure there is genuine equality of opportunity for our Black, Asian, and minority ethnic doctors.
[1] We use the term ‘Black, Asian and minority ethnic’ for practical reasons. We acknowledge the limitations of this phrase and recognise the diverse and heterogeneous experiences of people across and within different ethnic groups.
