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Background: Several studies have highlighted the insufficient inclusion of cultural diversity in medical schools' curricula and the extent of health inequalities highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic. This study aimed to critically review a range of GMC publications to identify the inclusion of cultural diversity topics in their guidelines, as according to recent studies, doctors are inadequately prepared to serve a diverse population., Methods: Twenty-four relevant GMC publications were analysed. An inductive thematic analysis was conducted to review the content of the guidelines; and discourse analysis was used to critically understand the linguistics used whilst also considering the cultural and social context., Results: The GMC publications primarily focused on discouraging discrimination and promoting equality. Themes around diversity in medical practice were less commonly covered. There was considerable internal inconsistency across the guidelines. Guidelines aimed at medical schools and medical students were more likely to consider cultural diversity issues compared to those intended for doctors., Conclusions: Cultural diversity teaching can only be as effective as the policy that drives it. Despite the inclusion of cultural diversity issues in GMC guidelines, this study suggests considerable ambiguity in how these issues are represented and understood. The guidelines require careful revision and should be written to reduce the likelihood of variable interpretation, thereby promoting better cultural diversity inclusion in medical schools' curricula, and consequently better patient care.

The present work studied the pH, organic carbon, phosphorus (P), calcium (Ca), magnesium (Mg), and heavy metals Cu, Cr, Co and Pb in roadside agricultural soils of Jalandhar environs of Punjab, India. A total of 120 samples in triplicates were collected from different sites for assessment of heavy metal pollution. The mean values of Cu, Cr, Co and Pb were found below the permissible limits of Indian and Swedish soil limits. Principal component analysis (PCA) showed that heavy metals have different sources of origin. The results of contamination factor (CF), geoaccumulation index (I geo ), degree of contamination (C d ) and potential ecological risk index (RI) showed low contamination and ecological risks of heavy metals in roadside agricultural soils, respectively. The maps of spatial analysis indicated that northern region of the study area is more polluted.

The aim of this Guide is to support teacher with the responsibility of designing, delivering and/or assessing diversity education. Although, the focus is on medical education, the guidance is relevant to all healthcare professionals. The Guide begins by providing an overview of the definitions used and the principles that underpin the teaching of diversity as advocated by Diversity and Medicine in Health (DIMAH). Following an outline of these principles we highlight the difference between equality and diversity education. The Guide then covers diversity education throughout the educational process from the philosophical stance of educators and how this influences the approaches used through to curriculum development, delivery and assessment. Appendices contain practical examples from across the UK, covering lesson plans and specific exercises to deliver teaching. Although, diversity education remains variable and fragmented there is now some momentum to ensure that the principles of good educational practice are applied to diversity education. The nature of this topic means that there are a range of different professions and medical disciplines involved which leads to a great necessity for greater collaboration and sharing of effective practice.

Background: Medical students consistently report low rates of interest in psychiatry as a career over time with negative perceptions of the specialty. Only 3-6% of students enter the specialty., Aim: To explore medical students' current career choices and attitudes to psychiatry and factors affecting these., Methods: Medical students at four UK medical schools completed a questionnaire related to career specialty choices and psychiatry and their psychiatry placement experiences., Results: A total of 905 questionnaires were returned. Psychiatry was first career specialty choice in 4% but in the top three choices in 14%. The students in this group who had undertaken clinical placements were more positively inclined towards psychiatry, given more opportunities to practice and receive feedback on psychiatric skills, and more inclined to practice psychiatry later., Conclusion: One in seven students is interested in psychiatry. Psychiatrists need to find ways to identify these students and target them with individually tailored interventions to help recruitment into the specialty.

Background: Individual medical schools currently decide on the content and delivery of their undergraduate psychiatry curriculum, so there is probably significant variation in the students' experience of the speciality during the medical course and in the extent to which they develop the appropriate skills and knowledge base., Aim: To ascertain how the teaching of undergraduate psychiatry differs across UK and Irish medical schools., Methods: The educational lead for psychiatry at each medical school in the United Kingdom and Ireland completed a questionnaire providing factual information on the teaching structure, contents and assessment methods in their current psychiatry curriculum., Results: Some aspects of the curriculum were consistent across the medical schools with other areas showing great variability. The course content was broadly similar but the assessment, length of experience and course structure differed., Conclusion: There are significant differences in how psychiatry is taught to undergraduate students in the United Kingdom and Ireland and although all the curricula are evaluated by the General Medical Council, further study is required to see if this has any effect on the levels of competency achieved.

Despite growing recognition of the need to increase cultural diversity undergraduate education in the UK, the US and Canada, there is a lack of cohesion in the development and delivery of cultural diversity teaching in medical schools in these three countries. This article highlights 12 tips for developing cultural diversity education in undergraduate medical programmes by integrating it in institutional policies, curriculum content, faculty development and assessment. These tips can be used to help ensure that students gain needed knowledge, skills and attitudes consistent with a view of patients as complex individuals with unique needs.

Background: Current policy states that 'service users and carers should be involved in planning, providing and evaluating training for all health care professionals. We wished to explore service users' views regarding undergraduate psychiatry., Aims: We aimed to explore user perspectives on the specific role of service users in the delivery of teaching psychiatry., Method: The study design was qualitative and used focus groups. The study took place in a community context with one focus group in Leeds, Leicester, Lincoln and Nottingham. Four focus groups were run with a total of 28 participants (16 women and 12 men, all white). No exclusion criteria were applied. The lead of each group were contacted and they then recruited volunteers from their membership., Results: The key findings were that participants felt that service users could play important roles in contextualising the part mental health plays in people's lives; dispel myths and fantasies about mental health; offer positive aspects of mental health to counterbalance the media; illustrate diversity within mental health and hope and recovery. Participants also identified the potential challenges to their participation including vulnerabilities especially at critical points in people's illnesses; perceived credibility - lack of support from some involved in academic roles; lack of appropriate training and support and issues of power and lack of genuine partnership in the planning and delivery of teaching. They were favourable about the development of guidelines as long as they involved a range of perspectives., Conclusions: Service users present a range of ways in which they could be involved to enhance the educational experience of medical students in psychiatry.

The aim of this study was to explore what professionals working in a child and adolescent mental health service (CAMHS) thought of provision of mental health services to diverse groups and what their training needs might be. Semi-structured interviews were undertaken and audiotaped with 17 CAMHS professionals. The tapes were transcribed and the data analysed using thematic analysis. The findings show no discernible pattern between different professional groups within the sample, although this is limited by the sample size and is perhaps not surprising given the common professional context. Just over half the participants perceived cultural diversity as equating with ethnic diversity. Staff thought diversity influenced service provision through access; communication; perceptions that different communities hold about mental health; perceptions that different communities hold about mental health services; and service factors. Staff were not clear about their own training needs and identified that training to date had not been entirely satisfactory. Staff openness may present an ideal opportunity to start dialogues with staff and community groups about how best services can be provided for an increasing diverse population of children and families.

Background: The General Medical Council set out the framework within which it expects medical education to develop. Educational guidelines have been developed across the world but their development is less clear in the UK. There has been little work regarding views about educational guidelines., Aim: The research objective was to establish the views of medical education stakeholders towards specific guidelines for teaching in cultural diversity to medical students., Methods: Sixty-one individuals were interviewed using a semi-structured interview. Thematic analysis was undertaken after the interviews were transcribed verbatim., Results: In total, 51 respondents felt that guidelines would be useful; 17 of these explicitly stipulated that these would only be useful if they were not prescriptive and if they were applied flexibly and were practical. Four respondents, including two policy-makers holding senior positions with medical educational bodies, felt that new guidelines would not be useful, as they already existed in some form. Five respondents were unsure if guidelines would be helpful or not., Conclusions: Guidelines were considered to be potentially useful for several reasons including to: help clarify what should be taught regarding cultural diversity and how it should be taught, provide justification for teaching the subject, help those unfamiliar with the subject, support those assigned with responsibility for developing such teaching, provide course and curriculum designers with reassurance, increase the credibility of the subject, set standards that serve as a benchmark against which schools can compare themselves with one another and highlight good practice. The reservations expressed suggest that the guidelines need to be developed using a range of stakeholders and have some degree of consensus to ensure that they will be used. The literature relating to attitudes towards clinical practice guidelines has much to contribute to the development of educational guidelines.

The views that students hold about cultural diversity and its teaching have been investigated to a limited extent in the UK and North America. The objective of this study was to establish whether there is a difference in attitudes between UK and US medical students with regard to this issue. A questionnaire survey was carried out on 191 year one medical students at the University of Illinois (Chicago and Urbana campuses) and University of Leicester. Differences of attitudes between students from the two countries and also between the same ethnic groups across the two countries were compared. There were statistically significant differences between UK and US students in each of the key areas of the balance between different cultures, attitudes of doctors and their practice relating to cultural diversity, culture and its associations with race/skin colour, perspectives on specific cultures and attitudes towards diversity teaching. There were some similarities in how students define culture but differences in how they understand multiculturalism. These findings suggest that programmes need to be tailored to particular circumstances, and that complex models of diversity need to be utilized in order for students to engage with them in a substantive way.

This paper describes consultation provided by the University of Leicester to the Medical University of Southern Africa (Medunsa) funded through British Council and the Department for International Development to develop a course addressing issues of diversity at Medunsa. The aims of the link were essentially for Leicester to provide support and guidance on the development of aspecific module. This inevitably included the provision of training in key areas such as teaching skills and evaluation of teaching. This paper focuses on the potential difficulties of such a link, which included cultural differences, issues of hierarchy and student influence. The project outcomes have been the development of a coherent module on human diversity which is assessed in such a way as to support the development of student writing skills, increased staff teaching skills and a joint conference to disseminate the learning that has taken place from the project.

This study aimed to establish whether students had an awareness of the requirement to consider cultural issues in caring for patients and to identify those issues which are most difficult for students, in order to aid course development. Data was collected using previously developed questionnaires which were modified and added to for the study undertaken at the University of Leicester Medical School in February and June 1998. Thirty fourth year and 75 second year medical students completed the questionnaires. Students accepted that they as doctors have a responsibility to be aware of the different cultures within their practice. Their responses supported the introduction of sessions on cultural and racial awareness as part of the Human Diversity Module. The sessions have been designed to facilitate students to explore their own perception and understanding of culture in a challenging, relevant and enjoyable way. The questionnaire developed in this study will be used to compare student attitudes pre- and post-teaching sessions to assess any change.

This paper begins with a brief review of child psychiatry teaching to undergraduate medical students.Teaching methods are also considered.The development of the current child psychiatry course at the University of Leicester is then described. This falls naturally into three stages from the beginning of the project to improve on the previous course. For clarity, the results are presented separately for each stage. The changes from one stage to the next and the rationale for these changes are presented in the overall discussion. The final section considers the present position and how we can further develop the clinical child psychiatry teaching programme.