Family Teams Of Young Adults With Disabilities And Their Parents And Siblings As Trainers For Medical Students

This is a required session for all first-year medical students with approximately 230 students currently attending. Older teens and adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities and their parents and/or adult siblings are eager to speak with future doctors in order to share their personal health experiences and suggestions about how health professional can provide quality medical care. Happily, the program is finding that it is becoming more difficult to identify self-advocates to participate because many are now either attending post-secondary programs or are employed in the community. However, the network of potential participants has increased over the years, many arranging schedules to return as presenters, year-after year, because they value this opportunity. Additionally, because of importance of including a diverse array of people with disabilities, "parent-only" presenters have represented the voice of individuals with more complex medical and developmental issues who may be unable to verbally communicate their own medical and health care experiences.

One of the successes of this training has been the support of medical school faculty- facilitators whom meet with presenters informally immediately prior to the break-out groups, sit in during the sessions, and are available to offer a debriefing for the medical students immediately after.

Finally, in an effort to effectively train parents and self-advocates about how to tell their personal stories in a way that translates well to an educational format, the program (a collaboration among LEND and Medical College faculty) has developed guidance for families on how to cover the objectives but it leaves the presentation style or format up to the families.

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