When I say … haunted curriculum

Abstract

As medical and health professions education (HPE) fields shift towards frameworks of justice, equity, diversity and inclusion (JEDI), there has been an increased focus on addressing the environments of learning to understand hierarchies of power and create better learning experiences for students who have historically been marginalised in these fields. We propose the haunted curriculum as an evocative conceptual framing to engage with the aspects of medical and HPE that are toxic and troubling to learners and to understand how violent histories continue to loom large and permeate the present. The haunted curriculum examines how forms of oppression and injustice, such as racism and ableism, are always ever-present and often arise in unexpected ways during training. The haunted curriculum also helps to uncover how environments of training and professionalisation may themselves inflict these forms of oppression and injustice and may be ideal spaces to counter them.