Is disability any business of nurse education?

Perceptions of and assumptions about disability as diagnosis-based, individualistic, and necessarily tragic, still appear in the nursing literature as well as the general media. The rejection of a medical model of disability by writers who are themselves disabled, and the construction of an alternative social model, might appear to leave nurses--as professional interventionists--without any role in the care and support of physically disabled people. Such a view, as expressed by non-nurse writers, fails to acknowledge the fundamental changes that have occurred in both nursing and nurse education. This article criticizes the presently politically correct social model of disability, and describes an alternative 'interface model', which centres on the actual daily experience of disabled people. This model suggests that there is still a positive and welcome role, as informed partner, for the nurse and his or her disabled client.