Course teaches students to provide better health care for people with disabilities

The students in nursing professor Lauren Clark ’s class sat rapt as guest speaker Susy Thiele described a recent frustrating visit to see a gynecologist.Thiele, who lives with cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair, was told prior to her appointment that there would be a lift to assist her onto the exam table. But when she got there, they could not accommodate her in her wheelchair.“It’s kind of wrong and sad that in our day and age, the technologies that they might have — you know, the simple things, there just in case — aren’t there,” Thiele said.Thiele and her caregiver, Mary Esquivel, were speaking to the students in Clark ’s “Care Work: Disability Justice& Healthcare, ” a course designed for nursing and other health care-related majors that was offered for the first time at UCLA this winter quarter. During the 10 sessions, students explored different models of disability care and the disability justice movement.“I think this is an important historical moment to influence a group of students,” Clark said in an interview outside of class, pointing to a new social justice movement around disability advocacy that is gaining momentum and picking up where the disability rights activists of previous decades left off. Moving away from formal channels of legal action and policy change, the contemporary movement is instead turning to community building to ensure access and support for those living with disabilities, she added. In action, this looks som...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news