Title: Ethical and Public Health Considerations for Integrating Physicians with Mental Disability into the Physician Workforce. 

Collection III: Disability in health sciences: the need for and benefits of inclusion

Authors: Amalia Sweet, Omar Sultan Haque, and Michael Ashley Stein

Description: 

Sweet, Haque, and Stein’s article explores questions of and argues for increased support and inclusion of physicians with mental disability. Grounding their work in the framework of intersectional social justice, the authors examine medical cultural factors, safety questions, and logistics. They conclude that greater representation of and support for mental disability in medicine will increase the quality and culture of medicine. The article outlines unfair, unnecessary, and discriminatory barriers currently faced by physicians and trainees with disability, to show inclusion and engaged support of physicians and trainees with mental disability is an issue of intersectional social justice. Efforts to increase the diversity of the medical workforce often focus on race and gender, skipping over disability as a dimension of diversity. When disability is considered, the extra stigma and incorrect assumptions surrounding mental disability can mean that people with these disabilities are overlooked or even specifically excluded. Meanwhile, the authors demonstrate that medical education, medical culture, and patient care would benefit from greater numbers of physicians with mental disability and are under-served when these people are excluded from practice or not properly accommodated.

Producer: Zoey Martin Lockhart, Lisa Meeks

Audio Engineer: Jacob Feeman

DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1017/jme.2023.24.

Journal link: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-law-medicine-and-ethics/article/abs/ethical-and-public-health-considerations-for-integrating-physicians-with-mental-disability-into-the-physician-workforce/B0F4C6CE019E648081F59AD928A15EF2

Transcript: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UPF9WaE9qrQmrmywfd465jZHGd8n1uER3AXlL6BdSdw/edit?usp=sharing

Release: Dec 2023

Keywords:

Mental Disability

Disability Inclusion

Patient Care

DSM

Psychiatric Illness

Mental Illness

Mental Health

Neurodevelopmental Disability

Neurodevelopmental Disorders

Learning Disabilities

Medical culture

Culture of Medicine

Diversity in Medicine

Disclosure

Professionalism

Competency

Clinicians

Clients

Ableism

Disability Education

Disability Attitudes

Disability Competency

Healthcare Training

Medical training

Care work

Chronic Illness

Disability terminology

Disability studies

Medical model

Health Sciences

Medical Education