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- Page navigation anchor for Improving Disability Awareness and Engagement in the Medical Professions though Research and AdvocacyImproving Disability Awareness and Engagement in the Medical Professions though Research and Advocacy
We have enthusiastically read the paper “Tackling barriers in Canadian medical school admissions for students with disabilities“ published at CMAJ. As our profession continues to address and identify issues around equity, diversity and inclusion, it is important to consider the significant under representation of those with disabilities amongst our profession.
In Canada, only 4.8% of employed disabled people work in health professions. This is the lowest representation of disabled employees when compared to any other sector (1).
We would like to highlight our study, an evaluation of Canadian medical undergraduate program accommodations policies (2). To contextualize this work, interviews were conducted with learners who have lived experience undergoing the undergraduate training programs while seeking accommodations for their disabilities. We also synthesized their feedback on the summary of our policies analysis of all Canadian MD programs. Further building on this work, we have undertaken an international comparison between that work and that of Meeks and Jain to better understand how our policies compared to that of programs in the United States.
While research is helpful, increasing awareness in other platforms is also important. As such, Dr Meeks and Liao led a social medical campaign #docswithdisabilities to highlight success stories and to normalize diversity in the profession both in Canada and US (3).
Further work is needed to explor...
Show MoreCompeting Interests: Dr Liao is a board member of the Canadian Association of Physicians with DisabilitiesReferences
- Human Resources and Skills Development Canada. 2010., “‘Employment’ Chapter 4. In: Federal Disability Report: The Government of Canada’s Annual Report on Disability Issues: 39-53.” Accessed 10 July 2017. https://www.canada.ca/content/dam/esdc-edsc/
- Tal Jarus, Pamela Liao, Alfiya Battalova, Julia Tikhonova, Samarpita Das, Vera Krejcik & Yael Mayer (2023) Policies as barriers for disabled medical learners: exploratory study of learners’ perspectives, Disability & Society, 38:10, 1763-1778, DOI: 10.108
- Meeks LM, Liao P, Kim N. Using Twitter to promote awareness of disabilities in medicine. Med Educ. 2019 May;53(5):525-526. doi: 10.1111/medu.13836. Epub 2019 Mar 25. PMID: 30907444.
- Page navigation anchor for RE: Tackling barriers in Canadian medical school for students with disabilities should extend beyond the classroomRE: Tackling barriers in Canadian medical school for students with disabilities should extend beyond the classroom
The authors did an excellent job summarizing the ableist barriers still present in medical school curriculum as well as application process. As a graduate student with chronic disabilities and someone who once seriously considered pursuing medical school, this article spoke to many of the reasons that persuaded me not to pursue medical school.
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Medical schools and the vocation of a physician has a reputation of being arduous. Although medical schools’ applications process may stereotype people with disabilities, often people with disabilities may also stereotype medical schools with good reason. Although there are accommodations one can get when completing the MCAT, there is often little to no information concerning the accommodations available in medical school. Providing data on the number of students who have disabilities in medical school as well as accommodations available will encourage more students to apply and advocate for themselves in medical school. More Canadian healthcare professional programs are being offered part-time and offering more virtual synchronous options for delivery which has been instrumental in reducing healthcare worker shortages (1). The path to becoming a physician also extends outside of the classroom to clerkships and residency. Often there is a lot of travelling happening as students are going to different hospitals which can be hard for students with mobility concerns or who do not have access to reliable forms of transportation tha...Competing Interests: None declared.References
- Statement on student accommodations [Internet]. Queen’s University; [cited 2023 Nov 27]. Available from: https://nursing.queensu.ca/policies/statement-student-accommodations