Doctors and disabilities
- Season: Season 4
- Posted On:
Do physicians engage in discrimination?
More than 60 million Americans live with a disability and that number will grow as the baby boomers continue to age. But new research throws into question whether those people are receiving the best care possible.
More than four out of five physicians say someone with a significant disability has a worse quality of life than someone without a disability. A minority of physicians — only 42% — feels strongly confident that they can provide equal quality of care to their patients with disabilities as they provide to other patients. And a large number of doctors say they do not strongly welcome disabled patients to their practice.
On today's program, a conversation with Harvard's Lisa Iezzoni, M.D. — a researcher at the Health Policy Research Center at Mass. General Hospital. She has been studying healthcare for people with disability for a generation now and finds the attitudes of her fellow physicians alarming, even 30 years after passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
.
An online transcript is available.
Massachusetts General Hospital
Professor
Boston, Mass.
.
.
FURTHER READING:
Physicians’ Perceptions Of People With Disability And Their Health Care, Lisa I Iezzoni, M.D., M.Sc.et al., Health Aff (Millwood). 2021 February
What should we teach about disability? National consensus on disability competencies for health care education, Susan Havercamp, Ph.D., et al. (Disability and Health Journal)
A call to action: Preparing a disability-competent health care workforce, Christina Neill Bowen MSW, LICSW et al. (Disability and Health Journal)
The Ohio Disability and Health Partnership
Nisonger Institute at The Ohio State University
CONTRIBUTORS
- Lisa Iezzoni M.D.
- Seán Collins
KEYWORDS
- disparities
- disability
- physician attitudes
- physician bias