Abstract:

Objectives:
With expanding student numbers on the Swansea Graduate Entry Medicine (GEM) course in an effort to get more doctors training and staying in Wales, it would seem important to explore the factors that face the medical students currently and what informs their choices in choosing to stay in Wales. This study aims to look at whether ethnicity plays a part in student experience and choosing to stay in Wales after graduation.

Methods:
22 semi structured interviews were conducted during October 2019, held in the hospitals and university, focusing on members of the 2016 and 2017 graduate entry medicine cohort at Swansea. A range of 14 closed and open ended questions were formulated. These were tested in a pilot interview. The themes that were explored in the questions included: general student experience, positives and negatives; reasoning for choosing to come to Swansea; their expectations and how its changed; attitude to ethnic minorities; integration in Swansea University and the city and factors influencing their Foundation Year 1 (F1) applications.

Results:
A total of 22 students were interviewed. The participants that were interviewed (n=22) came from a range of backgrounds and these were split into White (n=6), Black, (n=4), Asian (n=9) and Mixed (n=3). The data was split into 5 main themes of: Support in the university and hospital; experiences with nurses and patients; self-identity and feelings of otherness; gender; and family vs familiarity – factors influencing deanery applications. With each theme showing a clear trend in the frequency of negative experiences encountered by the Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) participants.

Conclusion:
This study highlights that although the majority of participants claim to have had a mostly positive experience there are conscious and unconscious ways the working and studying atmosphere in wales is making those of BAME feel uncomfortable staying in Wales in the long term. Hopefully the information gathered in this study can point the university towards issues they may not have been aware of and can help inform the decisions on how to help improve student experience for all. While also providing a starting point on research in some of the other factors that arose in the study, factors such as gender, education and socioeconomic backgrounds, in both a quantitative and qualitative study.

Keywords:

Ethnicity, Student experiences, Wales, Medicine, Graduate entry medicine.