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EDITORIALS: Phyllis L Carr and Kenneth C Edelin Increasing the number of medical students from under-represented minorities BMJ 2006; 332: 740 [Full text]

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But don't stop there

Anthony EJ Fitchett   (31 March 2006)

Increasing the number of medical students from under-represented minorities – don’t forget the cost of university.

Thomas J Beech   (27 April 2006)

But don't stop there 31 March 2006
Anthony EJ Fitchett, General Practitioner Mornington Health Centre, 169 Eglinton Road, Dunedin, 9001, New Zealand Send response to journal: Re: But don't stop there	Carr & Edelin are surely right in suggesting that the programme trialled by Greenhalgh et al to encourage 16-year-olds from deprived socio -economic backgrounds to enter medical school should be replicated elsewhere. But it will also be necessary to provide support to help those students cope with the social and financial stresses that they are likely to face, particularly in their early years, as medical students. Eight years' experience with a trust which helps medical students from low income backgrounds has opened my eyes to the level of financial hardship under which many such students struggle in a user-pays educational environment. I suspect that I am not privy to the social stresses that, even in a supposedly egalitarian country like New Zealand, are likely also to affect them. Competing interests: AEJ Fitchett is a trustee of a trust which assists medical students from low-income backgrounds
Increasing the number of medical students from under-represented minorities – don’t forget the cost of university. 27 April 2006
Thomas J Beech, SHO ENT Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham B15 2TH Send response to journal: Re: Increasing the number of medical students from under-represented minorities – don’t forget the cost of university.	Whilst I was interested to read the paper titled increasing the number of medical students from under-represented minorities1, finding it a novel way of this tackling this problem in medicine, I was concerned about the one major omission throughout the paper; money. Given the present climate and costs for students of medicine it seems a little short sighted to prepare people for medical school only to have their hopes dashed by the reality of the cost of this education. Whilst there are obviously incentives involved to help people whose families cannot afford to pay for their child to go to university, these will not cover all costs. A grant is available to children of families earning under £17,500. This is for £2,700 pounds. Tuition fees are exempt if your family earns under £21,500. However, the costs involved in studying medicine are high. If students study away from home the cost of the cheapest self-catering accommodation could be as much as £2,910 for one year (using the University of Birmingham as an example). This leads to the need for the use of a student loan, not a very appealing proposition. Given that only recently the BMA announced that medical student debt has reached highs of £20,172 for final years, there has been added worry over unemployment for junior doctors and redundancies for senior doctors, there is concern of not only excessive debt but not being able to pay it off at the end. I feel that this form of getting people from deprived socio-economic classes into medicine is a good idea, but ideas need to be put in to context and therefore there needs to be more thought on how to fund people from deprived socio-economic groups for medicine degrees. Competing interests: None declared