A fresh-faced doctor steps onto the wards for the first time, filled with excitement and terror. The corridors are full of difference. Each patient an individual, each carrying something different that matters to them.
Luckily, he had spent years making friends at medical school with people from backgrounds full of difference. Subconsciously absorbing and understanding different faiths and religious needs. Not from lectures, but through seemingly trivial conversations in the medical students’ common room.
This was me, and this is why faith diversity within the medical student body matters.
Faith and healthcare intertwined
The UK is diverse. When we say that, we usually mean ethnically or racially diverse. But it is also diverse in religion. According to the last census, more than half of people in the UK practise a faith – so half the people we’ll treat practise a faith to some extent. To put it into perspective, around 30% of the population suffers from hypertension.
Whether we like it or not, faith will always be intertwined with healthcare. It is not at odds with science: Louis Pasteur, the scientist behind the reason why the first step of an OSCE is to wash our hands, is often quoted as saying, ‘The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator; science brings men nearer to God.’ In my own Sikh faith, science is not viewed as blasphemous. The boundary between the Creator and creation is not so much a line as it is an illusion; beneath it is a fundamental oneness. In this sense, medicine does not stand apart from faith, but instead offers another way of engaging with this oneness.
Faith is a curious thing. Unlike some of the other protected characteristics in the Equality Act 2010, faith is not fixed. It ebbs and flows. People convert, drift away, or find faith later in life. And it matters deeply for how we should care for our patients.
Empathy improves care
As we all learnt for medical school interviews, sympathy is the idea that you can feel sorry for someone but cannot understand what it is to be in their shoes. But empathy – truly understanding what someone is going through – is what makes good doctors great. And the only way to reach that deeper understanding is through lived experiences that mirror those of our patients. At least, that's the answer I know myself and many of my friends gave! Today's medical students are tomorrow's consultants, and that body of doctors must reflect the population it hopes to serve.
This is not just about our patients: 70% of the NHS workforce also identifies with a religion. If we want to work effectively as a multidisciplinary team, we must also have an understanding of our colleagues.
Therefore, in my opinion, there are two ways faith diversity at medical school helps create a better future for healthcare.
The first is obvious. A practising Sikh who lives their faith day to day will have a far easier conversation about wearing a Kara in an MRI scanner than someone who sat through one lecture on it in second year. A practising Muslim doctor is better placed to talk a fasting patient through the risks of skipping medication during Ramadan. There's no substitute for having actually lived it.
Our indirect education
The second way is less obvious. Medical students are taught to be curious people; the more curious you are, the more of a patient’s story you end up uncovering. And when you put those minds in a room with peers who visibly practise a faith, the questions come naturally: why do you wear that, why do you pray like that, why don't you eat that? These conversations form part of the ‘hidden curriculum’ of any good medical school.
Most medical schools don’t teach enough about caring for patients with a faith. Plenty of medical students graduate without knowing the importance of the Kara to a Sikh patient; which common medications contain pork-derived gelatine, which a Muslim patient may object to; or what a Jewish patient observing the Sabbath might need adjusted. So that ‘hidden curriculum’ is entirely essential!
It is vital that all students are able to learn and train in supportive environments, and the BMA faith guidance sets out what medical schools should be doing to ensure this.
Doctors who reflect the patients they treat aren't just easier to talk to. They understand things no textbook, lecture or AI could ever teach them. That's why faith diversity matters, and it starts with who we train and how well we look after them at medical school.
About the author:
Harshvir Singh Grewal MB BChir, BA (Cantab) studied medicine at the University of Cambridge and is now a resident doctor at Wexham Park Hospital in Slough. A practicing Sikh with close ties to the community, he was recently awarded the Theo Chalmer’s Prize for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion for his work in developing Cambridge’s first dedicated teaching session on religious intolerance in healthcare; helping to improve local guidelines on religious wear; helping in the delivery of free community health screening in Sikh Gurdwaras; and supporting disadvantaged students applying to higher education.