Disabled healthcare professionals ’ diverse, embodied, and socially embedded experiences

AbstractDisabled people are underrepresented within healthcare professions, although their participation has potential benefits for them personally, and for broader society. Disabled peoples ’ participation in healthcare professions is limited by assumptions about disability. Little research explores how healthcare professions can be organized to support disabled peoples’ employment. Within a critical realist paradigm influenced by grounded theory, this study used interviews to expl ore the experiences of 56 disabled healthcare clinicians and students, and advance a conceptual taxonomy of disability experience within healthcare professions. Participants describe their experiences of disability in the healthcare professional context in terms of characteristics and dimensions of disability—how characteristics interact with factors within healthcare training and practice environments. We profile two particularly salient dimensions of the disability experience: visibility and onset of disability. These are developed to describe complexity and specificity of the experiences of individuals negotiating the healthcare context. Among participants there is extensive heterogeneity related to the experience of disability in healthcare professional contexts. Despite some having similar disability characteristics, no two individuals experience the same combination of characteri stics and dimensions of disability. Given the complexity of experiences for disabled healthcare professiona...
Source: Advances in Health Sciences Education - Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: research