Decolonising medical education regulation: A global view

Abstract

Medical education has followed other fields by enabling a global industry of regulation despite a lack of statutory authority for international regulators and a lack of empirical evidence to support any particular models of regulation. In recent years, global regulation of medical schools has been linked to migratory opportunities, especially from the global south to the global north. However, the power imbalances, and particularly geopolitical and postcolonial dynamics inherent in medical education regulation, have so far not been examined. Mindful that the inherent power imbalances between regulators and those they regulate are extended and deepened in the global arena, this article critically examines international regulatory policies in medical education and highlights the lack of evaluation to scrutinise their effects. Just as there are increasing calls for cultures in the global south to re-imagine imported views of medical education to suit their own context, we argue for the need to decolonise and re-imagine ways of supporting medical education in any context to enhance what it does to serve the local community, profession and development of healthcare. Those ways are likely to be local rather than global, and require a fundamental restructuring of global regulatory systems. We argue for a fresh approach to supporting medical education across different contexts that focusses on local rather than global priorities, to decolonise international regulatory activities.