Impact of Educational Intervention on Pre-Health Students' Understanding of Disability

Presenter: Noy Toledano

Faculty Sponsor: Ashley Woodman

School: UMass Amherst

Research Area: Disability Studies

Session: Poster Session 1, 10:30 AM - 11:15 AM, 163, C27

ABSTRACT

Equal access to healthcare for individuals with disabilities is a foundational stone that needs to be addressed. Provider disability bias or a lack of proper education on working with disabled individuals may be leading to the inequality and lower standard of care that many patients with disabilities face. The lack of a suitable curriculum in most graduate healthcare schools (e.g., medical, physician assistant, nursing, etc.) to educate providers on disability will continue to impact how individuals with disabilities receive care in healthcare settings. This study aims to implement a disability curriculum for pre-health undergraduate students and gauge what participants took away from the education by measuring their change in attitudes towards disability using the Disability Attitudes in Healthcare Scale (DAHC), Erroneous Assumptions Scale, and the Questionnaire on Disability and Opportunity (QDIO). Pre-health students will complete the online curriculum developed by the New Hampshire Disability and Health Program (DHP), which includes video components created by people with disabilities. Participants will then reflect through short response questions on what they learned about working with people with disabilities in healthcare. The study is expected to find that the attitudes of future healthcare professionals towards working with people with disabilities are more positive after learning more about the barriers people with disabilities face and how to better get around those barriers.

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