Widening Access to Medicine: A Realist Review

The under-participation of students from disadvantaged population groups in medical education reflects broader complex structural and societal issues, highlighting that widening access (WA) selection pathways into medicine are highly context dependent. While much literature on WA pathways exists, to date this is limited to small, mostly descriptive, single-site studies; hence there is a need for more robust and theory-driven approaches to yield transferable findings. This realist review sought to develop explanatory theory on designing and implementing selection pathways that successfully widen access to medicine and increase cohort diversity.