Preparing Healthcare Professionals to Care for Patients with Disabilities

Disabled people, and particularly people with intellectual disability and autism spectrum disorder, experience significant health disparities compared to nondisabled people. These disparities are not explained by the underlying disabling condition but, rather, by unfair and avoidable conditions. One prevailing condition, implicit bias and discrimination against disabled patients in the healthcare sector, limits quality of care and health outcomes for this population. Most healthcare professionals have strong implicit bias against disabled people, which negatively impact clinical decision-making and the behavior of healthcare professionals toward disabled patients. For example, most healthcare providers believe that disability confers poor quality of life. According to quality of life research with disabled people, this belief is false and damaging. Because training programs fail to challenge implicit biases and damaging beliefs about disability, healthcare providers are not prepared to provide quality health care to disabled patients. Including disabled people in didactic and clinical training as instructors, members of panels, and as healthcare students is the first essential step to preparing a disability competent healthcare workforce.