Effects of a Brief Curricular Intervention on Medical Students’ Attitudes Toward People with Disabilities in Healthcare Settings

Abstract

This study sought to evaluate the effects of a brief curricular intervention on medical students' attitudes toward physical disability in healthcare settings. Students participated in a focused curriculum about people with disabilities (PWDs), which included 2.5 hours of lectures, panel discussions, and video presentations. After the curricular sessions, students were surveyed (n = 237), and their attitudes toward PWDs in healthcare settings were compared with those of students who did not undergo the intervention (n = 251) using the Disability Attitudes in Health Care (DAHC) scale. Thematic analysis of the students' comments regarding the session was performed to supplement the DAHC scale. The intervention group responded with significantly more positive attitudes on 6 of the 17 items on the DAHC scale, and multiple linear regression analysis confirmed the independent effect of the curriculum on higher DAHC scale scores. Female students had more positive attitudes on the survey than did male students, although the effect of the curriculum was independent of gender. Previous experiences with PWDs did not correlate to higher attitude scores. These results suggest that a brief curricular intervention on disability can engender more positive attitudes in medical students toward PWDs.

Curriculum development on the human rights of people with disabilities for future medical education: using a modified Delphi

“…Such skills can be evaluated using clinical performance tests, observation and feedback through video recording, self-reporting, and student discussion [30,34]. If specific goals or evaluation criteria are not presented to students, they may lose interest and avoid active participation [29,42]. Therefore, appropriate evaluation methods should be considered when designing educational programmes [43].…”

Curriculum Development on the Human Rights of People with Disabilities for Future Medical Education: Using a modified Delphi

“…Such skills can be evaluated using clinical performance tests, observation and feedback through video recording, self-reporting, and student discussion [30,34]. If speci c goals or evaluation criteria are not presented to students, their interest may decrease and they may avoid active participation [29,40]. Therefore, appropriate evaluation methods should be considered when designing educational programs [41].…”

“…Moreover, education must be continuous and educational methods that increase student motivation should also be considered. As noted above, the long-term effects of short-term education on student attitudes and behaviour are unknown [11,24,31,40]. Furthermore, as positive attitudes towards people with disabilities may decrease over time [29,42,43], continuous education may be required for practicing doctors.…”

Development and validation of a scale to assess the attitude of healthcare professionals toward persons with disability

“…Therefore, individualized program development and application based on the data obtained from this scale could be possible, resulting in more effective intervention for improving healthcare professionals' attitudes toward persons with disabilities. [12][13][14][15]28 Although we initially developed a scale with a three-factor structure, which included cognitive, emotional, and behavioral domains, according to the model of attitude, 16 the cognitive domain was divided into responsibility and knowledge/skills subdomains through the exploratory factor analysis. The knowledge/skills subdomain includes understanding of persons with disability characteristics, etiquette, communication, and examination skills.…”

“…6 Moreover, understanding healthcare professionals' attitudes toward persons with disability by using these tools and identifying the factors associated with the attitudes could be helpful in designing the educational programs. [12][13][14][15] Although numerous scales regarding the attitudes toward persons with disabilities have been developed and validated, most of the scales have been developed for the general population. 6,12 For these scales to be useful in the medical environment, items on the perception, behavior, and emotion of healthcare professionals during their clinical activities for disabled persons should be included.…”