Using the health humanities to impart disability competencies to undergraduate medical students

Twelve tips for including disability education in undergraduate medical education

Disability is a large and growing minority population worldwide. People with disabilities continue to experience health and healthcare disparities. Despite multiple calls to action to provide disability education within undergraduate medical education as a strategy to mitigate ongoing inequities, robust disability education is not routinely provided across medical schools. This article provides twelve tips that any medical school faculty can utilize to integrate meaningful disability education within existing core medical education.

Disability inclusion in medical education: Towards a quality improvement approach

THE ISSUE

The shift to a more diverse workforce that includes physicians with disabilities has gained considerable international traction. Indeed, disability inclusion is experiencing a renaissance in medical education. However, the philosophy of disability inclusion must be adjusted from one where disabled trainees are viewed as problematic and having to 'overcome' disability to one where institutions anticipate and welcome disabled trainees as a normative part of a diverse community.

OBSERVATIONS

Most trainees with disabilities will enter an unregulated, uninformed system leaving them vulnerable to under-accommodation, systems barriers and lack of informed support. Further, the perception of the super human good doctor creates disincentives for candidates to disclose their disability, creating structural barriers that the system needs to address. A less often discussed contributor to health care inequities is the inadequate training of health professional educators on disability rights and disability competencies. Indeed, the lack of education, coupled with minimal exposure to disability outside of the hierarchical patient-provider relationship, perpetuates to stereotypes and biases that impact clinical care.

APPROACH

Disability inclusion has not been reviewed through the lens of quality improvement. To close this gap, we examine the state of the science through the lens of disability inclusion and offer considerations for a quality improvement approach in medical education that addresses the global revised trilogy of World Federation for Medical Education standards of quality improvement at all three levels of education, training and practice.

CONCLUSION

We propose a vision of systems-based disability-inclusive, accessible and equitable medical education using 9 of Deming's 14 points as applicable to medical education.

Data for all: Tactile graphics that light up with picture-perfect resolution

People who are blind do not have access to graphical data and imagery produced by science. This exclusion complicates learning and data sharing between sighted and blind persons. Because blind people use tactile senses to visualize data (and sighted people use eyesight), a single data format that can be easily visualized by both is needed. Here, we report that graphical data can be three-dimensionally printed into tactile graphics that glow with video-like resolution via the lithophane effect. Lithophane forms of gel electropherograms, micrographs, electronic and mass spectra, and textbook illustrations could be interpreted by touch or eyesight at ≥79% accuracy (n = 360). The lithophane data format enables universal visualization of data by people regardless of their level of eyesight.