National Council on Disability: Disability Clinical Care Should Be a Required Course in Medical Schools
WASHINGTON — The National Council on Disability (NCD) on Nov. 3 released a policy brief urging that disability clinical care be made a required part of training at all U.S. medical, nursing and other health care professional schools, in a bid to close long-standing health care gaps for people with disabilities.
The brief, titled “A Public Health Failure: The Lack of Disability Clinical Care and Competency Training of Medical Professionals,” says that because clinicians receive little systematic training in treating patients with disabilities, those patients routinely face both diagnostic over-testing and under-testing, and some are turned away altogether.
In response to NCD’s request for information while developing the brief, numerous people with disabilities and their families shared troubling experiences. One mother, herself a nurse, described difficulty finding urgent care or emergency department physicians who would treat her son, who has significant intellectual disabilities. Another account described a person with developmental disabilities who required emergency gallbladder surgery after being turned away by the same physician three times in one week. NCD said the accounts show how inadequate disability competency can lead not only to ableist behavior toward patients, but also to serious consequences for their health.
The brief builds on NCD’s 2022 Framework to End Health Disparities of People with Disabilities, whose five core recommendations include requiring comprehensive disability clinical care curricula in health professional schools. The new brief makes recommendations to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, state lawmakers and medical accreditation associations.
“People with disabilities should never have to wonder whether the doctor they see is prepared to care for them,” said NCD Acting Chairman Neil Romano. “Yet, for too long, our health care system has allowed medical professionals to complete their training without learning how to treat millions of Americans with disabilities. That is a public health failure, and it is one that we have the power to correct. Disability clinical care and competency training must be a standard part of medical education, not an afterthought.”
“People with disabilities are not rare. We are patients in every community across the country, and we deserve health care providers who are prepared to treat us,” said NCD Councilmember Theo Braddy. “It is time to stop treating disability clinical care training as optional. Our health is not optional, and the training should not be either.” Councilmember Sascha Bittner described years of navigating providers who did not trust what she communicated about her needs; when she needed treatment for a serious illness, she said, her doctors were not equipped to communicate with her or with those she designated to speak for her, resulting in even greater harm to her health.
NCD is an independent federal agency that provides recommendations on disability policy to the President, Congress, federal agencies and state, local, territorial and tribal governments. The brief is available for download at NCD.gov.
(Source: National Council on Disability)
Source: National Council on Disability
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：Wake Forest 医学院供医学生一年级、二年级课程使用的阶梯教室（资料图）。Allengot 摄，CC BY-SA 4.0，经 Wikimedia Commons。 / Photo: A tiered lecture hall used for first- and second-year MD courses at Wake Forest School of Medicine (file photo). Photo by Allengot, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
