The effect of medical education on the attitudes of medical students towards disabled people

Abstract

The negative attitudes of society towards disability and the resulting prejudicial behaviour affects the lives of disabled people. One of the declared aims of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Southampton is to improve attitudes. Hence, an attempt has been made to assess differences in the attitudes held by first- and fourth-year medical students, senior house officers and members of the general public towards disabled people. The measurement instrument used was the 'Attitudes Towards Disabled Persons (ATDP) Scale'. The total number of subjects in the survey was 428, of whom 263 (61%) responded. No significant differences were found between the attitudes of the four groups studied. However, a subpopulation of subjects who agreed with the statement that 'Disabled people cause more problems to doctors than non-disabled people' had attitudes which were significantly more negative.

The Effect of Prior Experience in a Rehabilitation Setting on Students’ Attitudes Toward the Disabled

“…Despite the shortage of research regarding nursing students' attitudes toward the disabled, there is substantial evidence in the literature of the relationship between education and the promotion of a positive attitude change toward disabled individuals (Berrol, 1984;Duckworth, 1988;Evans, 1976;Gething, 1986;Gruythuysen, 1987;Perry & Apostal, 1986). Other studies have found that contact with disabled individuals improved the attitudes of health professionals (Benham, 1988;Evans, 1976).…”

“…There were no significant differences in attitudes among these groups. Duckworth (1988) also found that medical students' attitudes toward people with physical disabilities did not change throughout their education.…”

“…Their beliefs about the importance of such attitudes were highly correlated with their actual attitudes as measured by the SADP. Duckworth (1988) studied the effect of education on medical students' attitudes toward people with disabilities. This study attempted to assess the difference between attitudes held by first-and fourth-year medical students, senior house officers, and members of the general population toward disability.…”

Quality of Life, Disability, and Hedonic Psychology

“…It is motivated also by the fact that the view is widespread in the literature of bioethics and health care economics. In fact, nondisabled health care professionals judge the QOL of disabled people to be even lower than the judgments made by nondisabled people who are not health care professionals (Duckworth 1988; Brillhart, Jay, and Wyers 1990; Bach and Tilton 1994; Gerhart et al. 1994; Albrecht and Devlieger 1999).…”

Disability Attitudes in Health Care

“…Individual physician attitudes can also impact policies at the institutional or societal level regarding allocation of resources toward PWDs. 2,3 The importance of cultural competency in dealing with disability will grow in the coming years as the number of patients with physical disability increases because of the aging of the population and young, disabled veterans returning from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Furthermore, communication with disabled or chronically ill patients is necessary across all medical specialties and is not limited to rehabilitation.…”