January 2024 | Lydia Smeltz, Susan M. Havercamp, PhD, and Lisa Meeks, PhD, MA
The article discusses the importance of integrating disability consciousness into health professions training to improve health equity for persons with disabilities. It highlights the lack of disability-competent healthcare, which contributes to inequitable health outcomes. Health care professionals often hold implicit and explicit biases against disabled people and receive inadequate disability training. Disability competence is essential, but educators must challenge ableist assumptions and promote a holistic understanding of persons with disabilities. Future clinicians must recognize disability as a part of diversity, show respect for disabled patients, and demonstrate flexibility in caring for their needs. These skills are currently undervalued in medical training.
The article emphasizes the need for competency-based curricula that include disability-specific knowledge, skills, and beliefs. Disability consciousness, which goes beyond competence, leverages disability justice principles to reframe trainees' perspectives and cultivate openness in clinical reasoning. It also raises awareness of historical violence and injustices against the disabled community and promotes respect, beneficence, and justice for patients.
The article calls for a shift in medical education toward disability consciousness, which involves recognizing disability as an identity and addressing the social model of disability. It also stresses the importance of including disabled people as teachers and having direct interactions with them to increase students' awareness, sensitivity, and preparedness for high-quality care. Medical education should also incorporate disability-related humanities, disability rights education, and the social model of disability.
The article argues that medical education should develop disability consciousness in trainees, which requires constant, active metacognition and reflection. This approach would lead to a holistic understanding of disability and help trainees navigate assumptions about disability and humbly partner with diverse, disabled patients. The article also emphasizes the need for humility in patient care and the ethical imperative to foster disability humility and better serve disabled patients. It concludes by calling for a standardized, interprofessional curriculum that is inclusive of diverse disability identities and led by disabled people.The article discusses the importance of integrating disability consciousness into health professions training to improve health equity for persons with disabilities. It highlights the lack of disability-competent healthcare, which contributes to inequitable health outcomes. Health care professionals often hold implicit and explicit biases against disabled people and receive inadequate disability training. Disability competence is essential, but educators must challenge ableist assumptions and promote a holistic understanding of persons with disabilities. Future clinicians must recognize disability as a part of diversity, show respect for disabled patients, and demonstrate flexibility in caring for their needs. These skills are currently undervalued in medical training.
The article emphasizes the need for competency-based curricula that include disability-specific knowledge, skills, and beliefs. Disability consciousness, which goes beyond competence, leverages disability justice principles to reframe trainees' perspectives and cultivate openness in clinical reasoning. It also raises awareness of historical violence and injustices against the disabled community and promotes respect, beneficence, and justice for patients.
The article calls for a shift in medical education toward disability consciousness, which involves recognizing disability as an identity and addressing the social model of disability. It also stresses the importance of including disabled people as teachers and having direct interactions with them to increase students' awareness, sensitivity, and preparedness for high-quality care. Medical education should also incorporate disability-related humanities, disability rights education, and the social model of disability.
The article argues that medical education should develop disability consciousness in trainees, which requires constant, active metacognition and reflection. This approach would lead to a holistic understanding of disability and help trainees navigate assumptions about disability and humbly partner with diverse, disabled patients. The article also emphasizes the need for humility in patient care and the ethical imperative to foster disability humility and better serve disabled patients. It concludes by calling for a standardized, interprofessional curriculum that is inclusive of diverse disability identities and led by disabled people.