![\"\"](\"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2020\/12\/EvetteRonner_web.jpg\")
<\/a>\u201cWhen Evette approached me last year with an interest in what and how we teach students about caring for patients with physical and\/or cognitive disability\u2014we looked at where content already existed and discussed where and when it could be enhanced,\u201d Weinstein says. They decided the best approach would be a defined curriculum integration, rather than creating isolated learning sessions.<\/p>\n
Ronner\u2019s initial idea took shape when she and Linda Morris \u201923 partnered on a Making a Difference (MaD) project in the first-year course Patients and Populations: Improving Health and Healthcare that encourages students to address issues that compromise the health of communities and populations, and to tackle problems that may reduce the effectiveness and value of healthcare.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy younger brother had spinal cancer when he was a child and it left him with various physical limitations,\u201d Morris says. \u201cNavigating the world with him made me aware of how many things in our society are not yet accessible to people with different levels of ability and I found this to be true in medical care as well.\u201d<\/p>\n Ronner and Morris became dedicated to closing this gap within their medical education in learning how to care for those with disabilities\u2014but further research into the subject also revealed gaps in the medical profession.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are so many important things to cover in the preclinical curriculum so rather than introducing a lot of new concepts that felt unintentional, we wanted to find natural places where they could be easily integrated,\u201d Ronner says.<\/p>\n Fellow classmates Michaela O\u2019Connor \u201923 and Arvind Suresh \u201923 share Ronner and Morris\u2019 interest in improving curriculum content around caring for patients with disabilities. When the Patients and Populations course concluded, the quartet turned the MaD project into a formal effort with larger goals. Because medical students rarely have an opportunity to interact with patients with disabilities until their clinical years, the team felt it was important to become familiar with these concepts early in their journey to becoming complete physicians.<\/p>\n Like her classmates, O\u2019Connor believes if medical students do not learn how to care and advocate for patients with disabilities at the beginning of their training, \u201cthen we will continue to perpetuate inequities that these patients experience in the healthcare system.\u201d O\u2019Connor\u2019s older brother had cerebral palsy. Her parents had an intimate understanding of the healthcare system and were able to advocate for her brother. However, O\u2019Connor believes that this burden should not fall on patients and their families.<\/p>\n Suresh\u2019s interest was deeply personal too\u2014he has been living with a speech disorder since childhood. During his first year at Geisel, he volunteered at the Spark Community Center in Lebanon, NH, where he says he was privileged to develop close relationships with adults living with disabilities. \u201cThe center was an open space for individuals to engage in activities with each other, and I was struck by how open everyone was in sharing their personal story with me and talking about how they advocated for themselves during medical appointments,\u201d Suresh says. \u201cThe experience of living with a disability can be isolating when you feel misunderstood\u2014our goal is to empower medical students to make positive contributions to the care of these patients as part of the medical team.\u201d<\/p>\n As they began moving forward, the team again reached out to Weinstein in Spring 2020. \u201cWe thought this was key curricular content important to integrate because students and physicians in all fields care for patients with disability,\u201d Weinstein says. \u201cAn understanding regarding the different types of disability and how best to support patient needs, whether it\u2019s assisting the patient onto an examination table, counseling about healthy lifestyle approaches, or recognizing how an illness may present differently in a patient with disability is essential to providing the best possible care to all patients.\u201d<\/p>\n Encouraged to think broadly about different ways to integrate disability education into the curriculum at multiple time points across all four years, Ronner, Morris, O\u2019Connor, and Suresh worked with Weinstein, along with Roshini Pinto-Powell, MD, co-director of On Doctoring, and David Mullins, PhD, associate dean of basic science integration, throughout the summer\u2014making additions to the On Doctoring Year 1 iBook and clinical reasoning cases. They also organized a patient panel for individuals living with Trisomy 21 (Down Syndrome) as part of the Fall 2020 Foundations course with the help of course director Lawrence Myers, PhD, and Jillian Rork, MD, assistant professor of surgery.<\/p>\n The four students then organized and are now leading a Disability Advocacy Group to collaborate with Geisel students across all years to develop creative ways of incorporating further education about caring and advocating for patients with disabilities both at an interpersonal and policy level into the curriculum. They are also working with Mullins and the race and health equity longitudinal curriculum implementation team to identify additional opportunities for disability-related education for all courses in the preclinical phase.<\/p>\n Working with my classmates has been inspiring, Suresh says, \u201cit is powerful to see just how dedicated we all are to this topic.\u201d<\/p>\n Feedback from first-year students has offered additional improvements for next year, but they also admit the additions to the iBook made them rethink their assumptions and implicit biases about persons with disabilities\u2014a gratifying outcome for Ronner, Morris, O\u2019Connor, and Suresh, who are encouraged by the number of medical students who want to contribute to this effort by adding their own voices and perspectives.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s always a pleasure to collaborate with students on curricular projects like this,\u201d Weinstein says. \u201cBetween their past personal and professional experiences, and lived experience of the current curriculum, student engagement and assistance in curricular projects typically leads to insightful and impactful changes. Even though Evette and her colleagues are still in their second year of medical school and have not finished Phase 1 of the curriculum, their input to enhance disability content in all of Phase 1\u2014which includes both Year 1 and Year 2 of the Geisel curriculum\u2014has been valuable.<\/p>\n \u201cThey have been and will continue experiencing some of these innovations in class this year and their feedback and collaboration will be instrumental in future improvements.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Four Geisel students are working with faculty to integrate content around caring for patients with disabilities into the school’s curriculum.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":14278,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9,1],"tags":[994,847,995],"class_list":["post-14277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","category-news","tag-disabilities","tag-home-feature","tag-on-doctoring","author-12"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2020\/12\/DisabilityProjectGroup_featured.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4r3h1-3Ih","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14277"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14277\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14286,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14277\/revisions\/14286"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/a><\/a>