The Consequences of Structural Racism on MCAT Scores and Medical School Admissions: The Past Is Prologue.

Those in medical education have a responsibility to prepare a physician workforce that can serve increasingly diverse communities, encourage healthy changes in patients, and advocate for the social changes needed to advance the health of all. The authors of this Perspective discuss many of the likely causes of the observed differences in mean Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) scores between students from groups well represented in medicine and those from groups underrepresented in medicine. The lower mean MCAT scores of underrepresented groups can present challenges to diversifying the physician workforce if medical schools only admit those applicants with the highest MCAT scores.

Medical education: part of the problem and part of the solution.

Medical education today is pedagogically superb, but the graduates of our educational programs are still unable to successfully translate decades of biomedical advances into health care that reliably meets the Institute of Medicine quality criteria. Realizing the promise of high-quality health care will require that medical educators accept that they must fulfill their contract with society to reduce the burden of suffering and disease through the education of physicians. Educational redesign must begin with the understanding that the professional identity of the physician who was successful in the acute disease era of the 20th century will not be effective in the complex chronic disease era of the 21st century.