Does your medical school have a Disability Officer?

Every medical school has an administrative department that deals with students who have disabilities. However, you may need to check with your medical school to see if it has a formal Disability Officer. In many schools, the Human Resources department handles issues pertaining to physical or learning disabilities.

At Mount Sinai, they have a Disability Officer and here is their description:

The Disability Officer works with all Icahn School of Medicine students in both the Medical School and the Graduate School to facilitate equal access for students with disabilities by coordinating reasonable accommodations through a variety of support services (ie: access modification, learning related technology, extended test times). 

The goal of Mount Sinai's Disability Services is to provide a physically and educationally accessible educational environment so that each student is viewed on the basis of ability, not disability. Individually designed accommodation plans and services are determined based on the documented needs of each student in conjunction with their program requirements and are created to match the specific disability-related need of each student with those program requirements in mind.

You can read more here.

Medical students with learning disabilities

What types of resources are available for medical students who have learning disabilities? There are not many published papers or studies evaluating various strategies to accommodate medical students in the United States. In Asian medical schools, public and professional awareness about learning disabilities remains low, supportive provisions are limited, legislations are inadequate, data are scarce, and equal-opportunity/widening-participation policies are not implemented effectively in the HE sector. Here is a 2010 paper discussing those issues in Asian countries: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3643129/

Lawsuit claims medical school violated Americans With Disabilities Act

There's a story on LJWorld.com that starts:

"An applicant to the Kansas University School of Medicine has filed a lawsuit against the school alleging she was denied admission because of a disability, in violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act.

Emily McCulley, who has been diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy and uses a wheelchair, originally was admitted to the medical school on Sept. 30, 2011, according to the lawsuit, filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Kansas."

You can read the full story here.

St. Louis University medical school sued by former medical student with learning disability

Last week, a story appeared about a former medical student who was suing St. Louis University medical school. Here's a snippet from the story titled, "SLU is sued by ex-med student with learning disability":

St. Louis University's medical school is being sued by a former student with a learning disability who says he wasn't given enough time to complete tests.

The lawsuit, claiming violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act, was filed last week in federal court in St. Louis on behalf of the student, who was identified as John Doe. The lawsuit says the student was kicked out of the SLU medical school after failing multiple timed tests required to progress through school.

The lawsuit says the student, who attended from 2002 to 2011, was diagnosed with dyslexia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in 2009. The student did well on course work, but earned multiple failing grades on a host of standard tests, according to the suit.

You can read more here.

Medical students with learning disabilities

Recently, we've had the opportunity to communicate with a number of medical students who have learning disabilities. Here's what Wikipedia has to say about learning disabilities:

Learning disability (sometimes called a learning disorder or learning difficulty), is a classification including several disorders in which a person has difficulty learning in a typical manner, usually caused by an unknown factor or factors. The unknown factor is the disorder that affects the brain's ability to receive and process information. This disorder can make it problematic for a person to learn as quickly or in the same way as someone who is not affected by a learning disability. People with a learning disability have trouble performing specific types of skills or completing tasks if left to figure things out by themselves or if taught in conventional ways.

There are a number of different conditions that may impact one's learning ability. Here's another interesting point that's made in this article:

Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is often studied in connection with learning disabilities, but it is not actually included in the standard definitions of learning disabilities. An individual with ADHD may struggle with learning, but he or she can often learn adequately once successfully treated for the ADHD. A person can have ADHD but not learning disabilities or have learning disabilities without having ADHD. The conditions can co-occur.

Regardless of whether ADHD is included in the standard definitions of learning disabilities, it's important to provide students with the necessary resources and support to survive medical school.

Thank you to those who responded to assist paraplegic students applying to medical school

We want to thank those of you who responded to our earlier request about assisting paraplegic students who are applying to medical school. We appreciate your willingness to be a resource and to encourage those who are aspiring to work in the medical field.