Article: Study Finds Many Doctors Are Reluctant to Care for people With Disabilities

[kestrell]

Kes: Because, of course, only completely healthy people who are never going to experience accidents, disease, or growing older go to doctors, so there is absolutely no reason that doctors should be trained to expect to care for people with disabilities. Did you know that last year Tufts Hospital lost a lawsuit for not providing accomodations for people with disabilities, including not having hospital beds that allowed for people in wheelchairs to move from a wheelchair to a hospital bed? Because that never happens in a hospital.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/10/06/metro/some-doctors-are-reluctant-care-patients-with-disabilities-study-finds

Comments

[elusiveat]

Grrrr.

[bibliofile]

OH FFS!!!! (Really, all caps does not express how loudly I shouted that out.)

[siderea]

It's vindicating to have the evidence, but, alas, not a surprise.

Medicine, at least as it is practiced in the US, is the most amazing mixture of nigh-supernatural brilliance with a level of transcendent idiocy so extreme it makes one wonder why most physicians don't spontaneously incinerate from sheer shame at their profession.

[kestrell]

I know that a lot of the major medical schools have medical humanities programs which include courses on disabilities, but of course 1, there aren't enough of these programs and 2, one or two courses aren't enough to counter systemic prejudices which are literally built into the institutions where doctors are trained, work, and spend their non-work lives.

More bouquets for Dr I

[jesse_the_k]

Dr Lisa Iezzoni (the PI on the research undergirding this story https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/hlthaff.2022.00475) finished med school and learned she had MS and needs to use wheeled mobility. There's nothing like an expert-by-experience to dig down into the structural barriers.