Does skin of colour education make a difference? A cross-sectional study at the University of Bristol

Dear Editor, It is well-recognized that skin of colour (SOC) is under-represented in dermatology education, learning resources and research.1,2 Attempts have been made in recent years to diversify dermatology education. However, much of the published work on this topic is based on medical schools in the USA and Canada.3,4 At the University of Bristol, the dermatology curriculum was updated in 2020 to incorporate more teaching on SOC. Lecture material was diversified, a specific lecture on SOC was introduced and new reading material was made available. As a result, current medical students in years 2 and 3 have been taught in line with this updated curriculum. Our aim was to establish whether improving teaching content on SOC results in a more confident cohort of students with better diagnostic skills in SOC. An eight-question survey was distributed to medical students in years 2–5 studying at the University of Bristol. It was also distributed to junior doctors (foundation doctors, internal medicine trainees and junior clinical fellows) working in the Severn deanery. The first two questions asked responders to rank on a five-point Likert scale: their confidence diagnosing and managing conditions in SOC, and the quality of their undergraduate SOC teaching. The next six questions objectively assessed responders’ diagnostic accuracy of conditions in SOC, asking them to select the best of five answers based on images of inflammatory and malignant dermatoses.

Citation

Hutchison, E., & Wainman, H. (2023). Does skin of colour education make a difference? A cross-sectional study at the University of Bristol. Clinical and experimental dermatology, 48(7), 810–812. https://doi.org/10.1093/ced/llad114

DOI

10.1093/ced/llad114

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14709/424