The views of medical education stakeholders on guidelines for cultural diversity teaching

BACKGROUND: The General Medical Council set out the framework within which it expects medical education to develop. Educational guidelines have been developed across the world but their development is less clear in the UK. There has been little work regarding views about educational guidelines. AIM: The research objective was to establish the views of medical education stakeholders towards specific guidelines for teaching in cultural diversity to medical students. METHODS: Sixty-one individuals were interviewed using a semi-structured interview. Thematic analysis was undertaken after the interviews were transcribed verbatim. RESULTS: In total, 51 respondents felt that guidelines would be useful; 17 of these explicitly stipulated that these would only be useful if they were not prescriptive and if they were applied flexibly and were practical. Four respondents, including two policy-makers holding senior positions with medical educational bodies, felt that new guidelines would not be useful, as they already existed in some form. Five respondents were unsure if guidelines would be helpful or not. CONCLUSIONS: Guidelines were considered to be potentially useful for several reasons including to: help clarify what should be taught regarding cultural diversity and how it should be taught, provide justification for teaching the subject, help those unfamiliar with the subject, support those assigned with responsibility for developing such teaching, provide course and curriculum designers with reassurance, increase the credibility of the subject, set standards that serve as a benchmark against which schools can compare themselves with one another and highlight good practice. The reservations expressed suggest that the guidelines need to be developed using a range of stakeholders and have some degree of consensus to ensure that they will be used. The literature relating to attitudes towards clinical practice guidelines has much to contribute to the development of educational guidelines.