New Student Charter

Published on

In June, prompted by events that highlighted the ongoing presence of discrimination in our global society, a large number of you contacted the School expressing concern about:

  • A need for diversification of the curriculum
  • Tackling inappropriate actions and comments from staff or patients on placement or within the School
  • A need to enhance reporting processes on concerns

We are committed to fostering a caring community within the School and it has been so helpful to have your support with this. Indeed, as some of you will remember, the School signed up to the BMA charter in the early part of this year and we began work on implementing this then.

Additionally, in terms of the curriculum, since June we have added an overarching learning outcome in respect of all our teaching content -

It is the expectation of the School that all curriculum themes will incorporate and cover material that reflect the diversity of the population, and where relevant, offer materials that reflect different healthcare needs in relation to all protected characteristics (age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation).

We have begun the process of auditing our curriculum delivery against this and will be working with all our content providers to develop our learning content over this academic year to reflect this.

We have also revised our processes for gathering feedback from you about any adverse events on placement and for allowing to share concerns generally. As a Student Doctor, you can view full details of our updated Sharing Concerns process on the School's Student Intranet.

Then, after communication with CEOs for each Trust, in partnership with the School of Health Sciences, the Dean and other University colleagues met with representatives from each Trust to begin a journey of enhanced awareness, information sharing and a development of training, to reduce the incidences of inappropriate behaviours on placement.

But the meeting we were most thrilled to be part of was that involving representatives from your School societies, and your year reps from last year, in a joint student-staff forum, attended by the Dean, and facilitated by Dr Mumtaz Patel and Dr Vidhi Taylor-Jones. This forum met in September, principally to begin a joint journey to explore and address all discrimination from within. However, it was quickly apparent that such a gathering of all our School’s societies and School reps, would also be useful at times across the year, to support the general development of societies and the School.

A number of excellent suggestions for development were shared at the meeting in September. Additionally, each society and rep shared thoughts in advance of the meeting, on statements that could be linked together to form a new Medical Student charter, as a framework for all medical student activity and as a basis for new action that will promote a caring culture within our School’s student community.

These were then collated and discussed further at the meeting before forming a draft charter.  It would be lovely to have your feedback on this. Please do share your thoughts.

In time, as new graduates, you will stand to take the oath that is contained in the Declaration of Geneva. This includes the important line:

I will not permit considerations of age, disease or disability, creed, ethnic origin, gender, nationality, political affiliation, race, sexual orientation, social standing or any other factor to intervene between my duty and my patient.

This statement is at the heart of everything our medical community should aspire to be. It is wonderful that staff and students are sharing thoughts and taking positive action together, to become a community that cares for patients, and also for each individual within our School family.