Affordability, inclusivity and justice: threats to the sustainability of the medical workforce in an economic crisis

There has been significant investment in widening participation to medicine over the last decade or so in many countries, including the United Kingdom.1 However, these efforts to increase diversity and equity within the medical profession are threatened by the current economic and political climate. Previously, Smith and Cleland2 highlighted that the changed ways of working in response to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) would likely exacerbate existing educational attainment gaps between different societal groups and thus impact significantly on young people from less privileged backgrounds who aspired to study medicine. These predictions held true: recent research demonstrated that the impact of the pandemic on loss of learning amongst those from less privileged backgrounds is greater than peers from more privileged backgrounds