Developing competencies among health professions students related to the care of people with disabilities: a pilot study

A scoping review for designing a disability curriculum and its impact for medical students

Background

There is an increasing need for a standardized undergraduate disability curriculum for medical students to better equip students with the proper training, knowledge, and skills to provide holistic care for individuals with disabilities.

Objectives

The aim of this scoping review was to better understand and analyze the current body of literature focusing on best practice for including disability curricula and its impact on undergraduate medical students.

Results

Three major components for designing a disability curriculum for undergraduate medical students were obtained from our analysis. The components were: (1) effective teaching strategies, (2) competencies required for disability curriculum, and (3) impact of disability curriculum on medical students.

Conclusions

Current literature revealed that exposing medical students to a disability curriculum impacted their overall perceptions about people with disabilities. This allowed them to develop a sense of understanding towards patients with disabilities during their clinical encounters. The effectiveness of a disability curriculum is dependent on the extent to which these interventions are incorporated into undergraduate medical education.

Transformative care for people with disabilities: Empowering senior nursing students with competency based clinical education-A qualitative study of the impact

BACKGROUND

People with disabilities (PWD) constitute 26 % of the U.S. population yet no nursing schools have compulsory clinical education specific to PWD. Inadequate education and negative attitudes lead to lack of preparedness for working with PWD. To meet the needs of this highly underserved population, nursing students need training and experience in the care of PWD.

OBJECTIVE

The objective of this paper is to report three themes from the qualitative evaluation of two immersive clinical experiences with PWD for undergraduate nursing students designed to evaluate competencies for working with PWD.

DESIGN

Curriculum evaluation using qualitative methods.

METHODOLOGY

During and after the clinical experience, qualitative data (reflection papers, debriefing responses, and group interviews) were collected with a volunteer sample of senior nursing student participants of the clinical experiences with PWD. Thematic analysis was used to identify changes in students' attitudes, perceived competence, and motivation for working with PWD.

FINDINGS

Three major themes are reported in this paper: A positive shift in perspective of PWD (attitudes), impact of the experience on students' practice with PWD (comfort, confidence, awareness and motivation), and revelations from the experience (attitudes and resource awareness).

CONCLUSIONS

A comprehensive immersive clinical experience caring for PWD provides a real-world laboratory with important experiential learning activities that help students acquire and apply knowledge about the healthcare needs of PWD. Reflection activities facilitate synthesis of that knowledge. Results from this study suggest that this clinical experience can transform students' attitudes toward PWD, enhance their clinical skills, and motivate them to consider a nursing career with this highly under-served population.

Cocurricular Clinical Opportunity: Addressing Student Attitudes, Knowledge, and Skills With Disability Education

BACKGROUND

Multiple organizations have urged inclusion of disability content in health care professional's education and training. Few nursing schools in the United States have adopted dedicated disability curricula nor studied its impact on attitudes, knowledge, and skills of disability education. Evidence suggests that inadequate education contributes to health care disparities and unmet needs of people with disabilities.

METHOD

A 2-hour cocurricular clinical experience was developed, using established competencies, and offered to senior nursing students. Students participated in multimodal experiences, with an emphasis on clinical exposure in various facilities serving children and adults with disabilities.

RESULTS

Five cohorts of students (N = 34) participated in the fellowship. Data illustrate the strong need to continue and require the curricula.

CONCLUSION

Faculty should develop disability education secondary to population prevalence and in accordance with the American Association of Colleges of Nursing's essential competencies. [J Nurs Educ. 2021;60(11):637-641.].

Appraisal of disability attitudes and curriculum of nursing students: a literature review

Worldwide, more than one billion people live with a disability (World Health Organization. (2011). World report on disability. Retrieved from https://www.who.int/disabilities/world_report/2011/report/en/). People with a disability (PWD) have unmet needs with the delivery of health care, secondary to nursing student's negative attitudes, knowledge, and skill deficits. This integrative literature review evaluated nursing student's education and attitudes towards PWD. Deficient education, attitudes, knowledge, and skills are addressed. Combined search terms utilized included: healthcare students; healthcare education; nursing students; clinical experience; clinical rotation; attitude of health care students; and exposure to PWD. Thirty articles were analyzed with common themes identified. Educational methods that produced improved attitudes, knowledge and skills included standardized patients with disabilities; phenomenological approaches; curriculum enhancement; empathy exercises and clinical experiences (Anderson, E. S., Ford, J., & Thorpe, L. (2011). Learning to listen: Improving students' communication with disabled people. Medical Teacher, 33(1), 44-52. doi: 10.3109/0142159X.2010.498491; Castro, S. S., Rowe, M., Andrade, L. F., & Cyrino, E. G. (2018). Developing competencies among health professions students related to the care of people with disabilities: A pilot study. Interface: Comunicacao, Saude, Educacao, 22(65), 551-563. doi: 10.1590/1807-57622016.0684; Hensel, D., Malinowski, C., & Watts, P. A. (2015). Implementing a pediatric camp clinical for pre-licensure education. Nursing Education Perspectives, 36(1), 60-61. doi: 10.5480/12-871.1; Levett-Jones, T., Lapkin, S., Govind, N., Pich, J., Hoffman, K., Jeong, S. Y., . . . Everson, N. (2017). Measuring the impact of a 'point of view' disability simulation on nursing students' empathy using the comprehensive state empathy scale. Nurse Education Today, 59, 75-81. doi: 10.1016/j.nedt.2017.09.007; Smith, P., Ooms, A., & Marks-Maran, D. (2016). Active involvement of learning disabilities service users in the development and delivery of a teaching session to pre-registration nurses: Students' perspectives. Nurse Education in Practice, 16(1), 111-118. doi: 10.1016/j.nepr.2015.09.010). Nursing schools must incorporate disability education to fully realize its impact and eliminate barriers to transform care.