U.S. Medical Schools’ Compliance With the Americans With Disabilities Act: Findings From a National Study

Abstract

Most medical school TSs do not support provision of reasonable accommodations for students with disabilities as intended by the ADA. Further study is needed to understand how schools operationalize TSs and barriers to achieving ADA standards.

Physician Workforce Disparities and Patient Care: A Narrative Review

“…LGBTQ + -inclusive evidence-based educational materials 188,190 LGBTQ + -inclusive forms and decision-making tools 188,190 Physicians with disabilities Recruitment and workforce culture Include disability in discussions of diversity 4,191,192 Increase recruitment 193 Remove pressure on students and physicians to disclose the full nature of their disability 4 Improve and standardize medical school technical standards 194 addressing unclear, inconsistent, and lengthy policies and processes 4 Define responsibility for accommodations 4,194 Provide access to appropriate accommodations, personal and professional networks, peer support, and mentorship 4 Expand study of barriers and accommodations supportive of physicians [194][195][196] Patient comfort, communication, and outcomes Improve access, provider awareness, and communication, and address attitudinal barriers [45][46][47][48][49]195,[197][198][199] anxiety, low perceived self-health, harassment, and isolation. 130 Burnout in physicians with disabilities and intersectional identities Unfortunately, we were unable to find any study specifically aimed at examining burnout in physicians with disabilities or with intersectional identities, making these important areas for future research.…”

Prevalence of Self-disclosed Disability Among Medical Students in US Allopathic Medical Schools

“…1–4 It remains unclear how many medical students have disabilities; prior estimates are out-of-date and psychological, learning, and chronic health disabilities have not been evaluated. 5 This study assessed the prevalence of all disabilities and the accommodations in use at allopathic medical schools in the United States.…”

Learning from Physicians with Disabilities and Their Patients

“…In the first case, the largely unspoken standard of the "undifferentiated physician"-that is, the requirement that all medical school students be able to practice any medical specialty upon graduation-imposes standards that any student might have difficulty meeting. Despite the legal requirement for educational institutions receiving federal financial assistance to provide "auxiliary aids and services" to ensure effective communication [9] and for common carriers and the federal government to provide communications services for the DHoH [10], as set forth in the Americans with Disabilities Act, many medical schools' technical standards do not explicitly support accommodating disabilities [11]. Such technical standards continue to focus on incapacity rather than on preserved capacity [12].…”

“…Such technical standards continue to focus on incapacity rather than on preserved capacity [12]. Furthermore, these standards are not in keeping with current technological achievements to accommodate students with disabilities [11]. Another potential obstacle to matriculation faced by applicants who had taken the Medical College Admissions Test ® (MCAT) with accommodation for a disability was that, until late March of 2015, their MCAT scores were marked with an asterisk [13,14]; this indicated to anyone reading those applicants' American Medical College Application Service dossiers, including medical school admissions committee members, that a particular applicant probably has a disability.…”