Criminal Background Checks to Become Part
Of Medical School Application Process
BY Dana Forde
In addition to daunting applications, lengthy essays and grueling exams, students applying to medical school may now face another obstacle: a criminal background check.
Earlier this year, the Association of American Medical Colleges approved a national system for completing criminal background checks for medical school applicants. Eventually, the system will be available to all 125 AAMC-member medical schools.
State legislatures see the system as an added protection for vulnerable patients. Others, however, fear that a national background check system may disproportionately affect minority medical school applicants who had run-ins with the law years before applying to medical school.
Some say the background checks will deter some minority students from even applying. If proven true, that reality would be a setback for medical schools struggling to increase minority enrollment. Racial minorities comprise less than 10 percent of the country’s physician workforce, according to a spring 2005 report from the AAMC.
“It’s detrimental for them to overcome this hurdle,” says Shaka Bahadu, a first-year medical student at Cornell University’s Weill Medical College. “If you have a criminal record, it’s just one more excuse for them to cut you.”
