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Abstract
Objectives Health professions education (HPE) students are often not representative of the populations they will serve. The underrepresentation of non-traditional students is problematic because diversity is essential for promoting excellence in health education and care. This study aimed to understand the perceptions of traditional and non-traditional students regarding facilitators and barriers in preparing for HPE selection procedures, and to determine the role of social networks in their decision-making and preparations to apply.
Methods A qualitative study was conducted with 26 Dutch youth who were interested in university-level HPE programmes. Semistructured interviews and sociograms were analysed using thematic analysis, adopting a constructivist approach.
Results Twenty-six high school students participated, with traditional and non-traditional backgrounds, with and without social networks in healthcare and higher education. Two themes were constructed. First, four high-impact facilitators helped to overcome barriers to apply and in preparation for selection: access to a social network connection working or studying in healthcare, to correct information, to healthcare experience and to a social network connection in higher education. Lack of information was the main barrier while access to social network connections in healthcare was the main facilitator to overcome this barrier. However, this access was unevenly distributed. Second, access alone is not enough: the need for agency to make use of available facilitators is also essential.
Conclusions The themes are discussed using intersectionality. Traditional students with access to facilitators develop their self-efficacy and agency within social structures that privilege them, whereas non-traditional students must develop those skills without such structures. Our findings provide recommendations for the ways in which universities can remove barriers that cause unequal opportunities to prepare for the selection of HPE programmes. Along with equitable admissions, these recommendations can help to achieve a more representative student population and subsequently a better quality of health education and care.
- medical education & training
- education & training (see medical education & training)
- qualitative research
Data availability statement
No data are available. The data that support the findings of this study are not publicly available due to them containing information that could compromise research participant privacy and consent.
This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.
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- medical education & training
- education & training (see medical education & training)
- qualitative research
Data availability statement
No data are available. The data that support the findings of this study are not publicly available due to them containing information that could compromise research participant privacy and consent.
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Footnotes
Twitter @NoukNouk84, @r_kusurkar
Contributors AW, JHR, GC and RAK conceived the idea for the research. LM, AW and RAK designed the research. LM interviewed all participants. LM, AW, SF-W and RAK analysed the data. LM wrote the first draft of the article and all coauthors contributed to the article with important critical revisions in multiple revision rounds. The final manuscript is the result of the combined expertise of all authors and is approved for publication by all authors. RAK is the guarantor.
Funding This work was supported by the Nationaal Regieorgaan Onderwijsonderzoek (NRO) (grant number: 40.5.18650.007).
Competing interests None declared.
Patient and public involvement Patients and/or the public were not involved in the design, or conduct, or reporting, or dissemination plans of this research.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
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