From disability competencies to disability consciousness: leveraging the health humanities to develop...

As health professions educators heed the call for more robust disability-conscious education, we must look beyond the entrenched methods and epistemologies of the biomedical sciences. Health professions education (HPE) rooted solely in a "medical model" of disability presents an incomplete portrait of living with disability, reinforcing ableist stigma and misconceptions of disability as an individual limitation rather than a simultaneously social, structural, and embodied phenomenon. This perpetuates stark health disparities that result from health care provider (HCP)'s insufficient medical knowledge, poor communication skills, implicit bias, and general discomfort caring for people with disability (PWD). Moreover, it draws a false divide between patients and providers with disabilities, contributing to discrimination against HCPs with disabilities. Both to address curricular gaps and to improve access and inclusion for HCPs with disabilities, curricular efforts to prepare health professions students to care for PWD must be grounded in disability theory and the health humanities. Applying Moniz and colleagues' 2021 "Prism Model for Integrating the Arts and Humanities into Medical Education" to the development of a disability curriculum, this article models the centrality of the health humanities not only for developing future HCPs' disability competencies, but also for encouraging students' disability consciousness. From mastering skills to promoting perspective taking, personal insight, and social advocacy, the epistemic functions of the health humanities provide the foundation for humility, accessibility, and disability consciousness.