This is the first episode of our second collection, Integrating disability into health sciences curricula: implementation, recommendations, and the need for disability content in health sciences education, we cover the 2021 article, “What Should We Teach about Disability? National Consensus on Disability Competencies for Health Care Education” published in the Disability and Health Journal by Havercamp, Barnhart, Robinson, and Whalen Smith.

The authors describe the necessity of widespread and consistent disability training across interprofessional health education, an umbrella that encompasses medicine, nursing, social work, and psychology—among other disciplines. Taking up their own imperative, the authors propose a set of competencies, sub-competencies, and principles that could act as a national standard. The article details the collaborative, multi-phase process of developing and repeatedly revising the competencies with help from expert reviewers with both lived and professional expertise in disability and its relevance in healthcare fields.

Transcript: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TcbDgXWtWMR_TIp62a-jiZPq44FOFfaIlxrWicP_Ci4/edit?usp=sharing

Key Words: 

Disability competencies

Disability standards

Disability education

Interdisciplinary health education

Healthcare training

Medical training

Care work

Chronic Illness

Disability terminology

Disability studies

Social model

Medical model

Health Sciences

Medical Education