“This shouldn’t be our job to help you do this”: exploring the responses of medical schools across Canada to address anti-Black racism in 2020

Abstract

Systemic anti-Black racism is deeply entrenched in health systems and all aspects of medical training -from admissions and assessment, to the everyday discrimination experienced by Black medical students and physicians. [1][2][3] Medical schools in Canada have directly upheld anti-Black racism through institutional policies and practices that exclude Black people from the profession of medicine. A direct example of this is Queen's University's official ban on the admission of Black students that was enforced between 1918 and 1965 -and revoked only in 2018. 4 Although Black people constitute 3.5% of Canada's total population, they continue to be critically underrepresented in the population of practising physicians and medical students, 5 and this historical and ongoing exclusion of Black people from medical education has direct implications for the quality of patient care and health outcomes. [6][7][8][9] Institutional commitment of medical schools to prioritize combatting anti-Black racism and promote racial justice is lacking, especially in Canada, where the historical and ongoing legacy of systemic anti-Black racism has largely been minimized. 10 After the widely publicized murder of George Floyd in May 2020 and subsequent Black Lives Matter protests, medical schools -like many public and private organizations around the world -released

Variegated racism: exploring experiences of anti-Black racism and their progression in medical education

“…Our empirical evidence from the Canadian Prairies adds to the broader evidence on experiences of anti-Black racism in Canadian medical education and provides further context on how and why power differentials expose Black leaners to structural violence in the Canadian medical education system. 39 , 40 Future research could involve quantitative assessments of experiences of anti-Black racism across medical schools in Canada to confirm whether junior medical learners consistently report fewer incidents than senior colleagues. In addition, given our findings regarding curricular racism, an inventory of medical curricula across Canada could reveal how curricular racism looks across contexts.…”

Using Critical Pedagogy to Advance Antiracism in Health Professions Education

“…6,10,18,19,20 Health professions training programs and institutions are racialized organizations, yet they regularly do not explicitly name structural racism or intervene on its effects on recruitment, retention, evaluation, or segregation within the learning environments. 11,21,22,23,24,25,26,27 Actions-Oriented Teaching and Learning To advance antiracist health professions education and teach health professionals to intervene on inequities, a paradigm shift is needed. Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed guides us toward this end.…”

Leading Change from Within: Student-Led Reforms to Advance Anti-Racism within Medical Education

“…Despite the competing priorities within the medical curricula, anti-racism must be prioritized if medical education institutions are to genuinely respond to the broader calls to action and create safe environments for Indigenous, Black, and racialized patients and healthcare providers, alike. While institutions have been quick to publicize their support for antiracism reforms, operationalizing these changes with the incorporation of anti-racism concepts and upholding safe learning environments for racialized students has yet to actualize, thus questioning if medical schools are truly able to uphold their social accountability mandates [17]. This paper aims to discuss one avenue that medical students have pursued to further advocate for the inclusion of antiracism training into their learning environments.…”

“…Ideally, anti-racism reforms in curricula should not require unpaid student labor to materialize. However, continued advocacy for long-term curricular changes and ensuring accountability of medical school leadership often falls on the shoulders of student leaders [17]. Reorienting medical education to better address structural causes of oppression and racism within healthcare will be a significant, but necessary undertaking that must be driven by faculty and institutional leaders in their mandate to keep medical programs socially accountable.…”