Medical education has undergone rapid change in the last few decades. Not long ago, males made up the vast majority of doctors and medical students but this has changed: today the majority of students in UK medical schools are female (BMA 2009)- Not long ago the vast majority of doctors and students in the UK were Caucasian but this has also changed: according to a BMA report "in 2008, 29 per cent of students offered a place at medical school were from ethnic minority backgrounds." (BMA 2009) Medicine and medical education have made progress - there is now much more diversity in our ranks. But one form of exclusiveness remains, to get into medical school you have to be rich. Is this too blunt a statement? Certainly it is difficult to get in if you are poor. According to a recent report in the UK, only 2% of medical students come from socio-economic class VII, which represents people whose families have routine occupations (BMA 2009). In another study, Seyan and colleagues (2004) demonstrated that few students in medical schools come from lower socioeconomic classes.
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