The Royal College of Physicians (RCP) has published the findings of a project to understand how it can support its members to address health inequalities in their practice. The work was led by the RCP’s clinical fellow for health inequality, Dr Ash Birtles, and included a quantitative survey of RCP members as well as qualitative interviews with clinicians.
The project examined what previous education and training RCP members had received around health inequalities, their level of confidence in managing health inequalities in practice and how they felt the RCP could support them with this. Key findings from the research included:
- 67% of respondents to the quantitative survey had not received teaching or training in health inequalities within a training programme or as part of their degree.
- Only 26% of respondents felt confident in their ability to reduce health inequalities in their medical practice. 31% felt confident in their ability to talk to patients about the impact of inequalities on their health.
- When asked about what the RCP could do to enhance practice in addressing health inequalities, the three options chosen by most survey respondents were e-learning (55%), workshops (28.6%) and face-to-face education (25.7%).
- All participants in qualitative interviews felt that having easily searchable ‘bitesize’ information would be helpful, which could be accessed at a time and place convenient for them.
The RCP will use the findings to inform the development of its education and learning offer for members on health inequalities. The complete findings of the research can be downloaded below.
This report was sponsored by Novartis Pharmaceuticals UK Limited by the provision of funding. Novartis Pharmaceuticals UK Limited have had no input into the report.