Medical Student UMKC School of Medicine kansas city, Missouri, United States
Research Objectives: To assess what factors contribute to medical students feeling comfortable working with people who have disabilities.
Design: A one-time electronic survey on Redcap.
Setting: Students at a variety of medical schools around the country.
Participants: A total of 97 medical students in years 1- 4 of school participated in this survey.
Interventions: An electronic anonymous survey via Redcap was distributed by email and Groupme to about 400 medical students.
Main Outcome Measures: Percentage of students who respond to the given survey questions and the results of each question.
1) Does your school have any formal curriculum or training on working with patients with disabilities?
How confident are you in your ability to interact with and provide care for persons with disability?
Have you encountered a patient with some sort of disability (physical, intellectual, developmental) in your training?
Did any of your OSCE’s or SP encounters involve patients with a disability?
Results: Responses were received from 97 students (response rate of 32.3%). 62% of students said that their schools do not have any formal curriculum or training on working with patients who have disabilities. The majority of students expressed a decreased confidence level when it comes to caring for people with disabilities. 31% of students have yet to encounter a patient with a disability in their training so far. 80% of students said their medical school OSCE or standardized patient encounter did not involve patients with disability.
Conclusions: It is evident from this data that many schools are lacking training in how to care for and interact with people with disabilities. This is seen in the lack of confidence students have in their ability to encounter this population. Medical schools lacking the necessary training to provide inclusive and competent care should put more effort into changing curriculum, thus providing opportunities to interact with people who have disabilities.
Author(s) Disclosures: None
Learning Objectives:
To assess what factors contribute to medical students feeling comfortable working with people who have disabilities.
Identify areas of improvement within their respective institution's curriculum to help medical students feel comfortable caring for people who have a disability.
Demonstrate preparedness in being able to care for people with disabilities.
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