Disability in medicine is under-represented. As of 2018, 1 in 6 Australians have a disability – constituting 4.4 million individuals. In 2021, 4,153 students commenced a medical degree. The prevalence of disability in Australian medical students remains low, at less than 2%, when compared to similar programs worldwide. 

The Australian Medical Students’ Society (AMSA)  believes medical students and healthcare workers with disabilities to be invaluable to the healthcare workforce.The first-hand experience and understanding they bring to patient-centred healthcare is essential and underrepresented. The Medical Deans of Australia and New Zealand share this same opinion, yet accessible entry pathways to medicine are difficult to find.

The World Health Organisation predicts that by 2030, there will be an international shortfall of 10 million healthcare workers. This predicted shortage can be addressed in the present day by re-evaluating medical school admission criteria and ensuring they are realistic and achievable for prospective students, non-disabled and disabled. AMSA calls for the re-evaluation of the medical school admissions programs to ensure the best opportunity for all students to study medicine. Reasonable accommodations can be implemented through a Disability Entry Pathway, ensuring that medical school is inclusive for students, and thus benefiting patients. Concerningly, an inflexible curriculum and a lack of individualised support are among some of the hardships experienced by medical students with disabilities across Australia. 

Medical students, healthcare workers and doctors with disabilities provide unique insights into patient experience and care through their lived experience. Disability provides alternate viewpoints to the abled, which can enhance problem-solving capacity. Disability should be celebrated and represented, rather than prejudiced against. 

“A diverse healthcare population needs to be serviced by a diverse healthcare workforce,” says Raener Miller, the AMSA Disability Advocacy Officer. “Healthcare workers with disabilities offer a unique perspective on patient healthcare, clinically and holistically. Lived experience makes them better doctors, students and clinicians.”

Doctors have expressed their attitudes regarding the care of disabled patients and the results were shocking. In an anonymised survey, physicians in the United States reported that they felt underprepared and lack confidence to treat patients with disability. Negative attitudes towards patients with disability were also identified, especially through the use of outdated and ableist language. How can you trust a doctor who calls you “mentally retarded” to provide the best care?

How better to solve this dilemma than recruiting the lived experience of medical students, healthcare workers and doctors with disability? Creating a Disability Access Pathway would increase the number of prospective medical students with disability, who will then become doctors that are well-equipped to treat patients with disability. The benefits to patients would be significant, reducing blatant and insidious forms of ableism and decreasing the need for patient self-advocacy because healthcare workers would understand patients from a first-hand perspective. 

Australia needs more medical students, healthcare workers and doctors with disability; how will you invoke this change?