The New York Times has a fascinating article on the increasing number of medical students with disabilities:
"The human body fascinates me, but my greatest strength as a doctor is patient contact," said [legally-blind fourth-year med student] Mr. Lawler, who is rarely without his guide dog, Burke. "Yes, my knowledge is good, but I also bring empathy to the bedside. I've been treated by doctors who didn't really listen to me or said things like, `You're not planning on having children are you?' So I take my time with patients and try and really listen and thoroughly explain things."
In the past, students with physical disabilities were rarely accepted to medical school, and they rarely completed it. But now Mr. Lawler joins a growing number of students with disabilities who are thriving in medical school. Though no statistics document how many of these students are attending medical school or how many disabled doctors are practicing, experts in the field note that laws like the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990 allowed disabled students access to every level of education and helped propel the current increase in medical students...
At least one doctor believes that it is those in the medical profession itself who are responsible for creating barriers against disabled students who don't exude the "perfect health" image:
"Doctors are the least comfortable and often the least knowledgeable about disability issues," said Dr. Julie Madorsky, 58, who practiced from 1969 to 1995. She had childhood polio and was the prototype for the character Dr. Kerry Weaver, the attending physician who walks with the aid of a crutch on the television series "E.R."
Dr. Madorsky said: "There's a concept that it's `them' and `us.' The idea that someone can enter medicine with a physical disability is counterintuitive. It goes against the notion that doctors are healthy and perfect and able-bodied and patients are not."
Are disabled doctors more likely to be incompetent doctors? The malpractice insurance underwriters don't think so:
The disabilities legislation may have had other influences as well. No studies have looked at malpractice and whether disabled doctors and medical students are at higher risk. But, according to the Physician Insurers Association of America, a trade association of medical malpractice insurance companies, there is no difference in underwriting medical liability policies for doctors who are disabled and those who are not.
Posted by kswygert at November 25, 2003 02:04 PM