Shared Decision-Making at the Intersection of Disability, Culture, and Language Accessibility: An Educational Session...

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Health Disparities
• Communication in Healthcare

Background:

• People with disabilities and non-English language preferences experience poorer health outcomes due to communication barriers and fragmented care.
• Individuals who are Deaf and use American Sign Language face compounded health disparities.
• Insufficient training in medical programs contributes to provider discomfort with these demographics.

Purpose of the Study:

• To address health disparities by implementing an educational session for undergraduate medical students.
• To improve medical students' understanding of disability, language, and communication in healthcare settings.

Main Methods:

• A 2-hour educational session on disability, language, and communication was developed for 404 second-year medical students.
• A retrospective postsession survey was used to evaluate learning objective achievement.
• The Wilcoxon signed rank test was employed to compare pre- and post-session confidence levels.

Main Results:

• Students reported significantly higher self-perceived abilities in all four learning objectives post-session (p < .001).
• Learning objective achievement scores increased from 73% before the session to 98% after the session.
• Confidence in performing learning objectives significantly improved for all students.

Conclusions:

• Educational initiatives on disability culture and communication barriers can strengthen cultural humility and healthcare delivery.
• Such training is crucial for improving health equity for underserved patient populations.
• Medical students benefit from enhanced education to better serve diverse patient needs.