Project Description:
Need:
People with disabilities, especially developmental disabilities, have poorer health and greater healthcare needs compared to people without disabilities. Yet, they face barriers to accessing healthcare in the community. One significant barrier is finding healthcare providers with the comfort and competence to treat them. Students entering healthcare professions are rarely offered disability training.
Overall Goal:
The goal of the Healthcare Parity Project is to increase the capacity of health care providers to provide quality healthcare to persons with disabilities. Towards this goal, we engage in 2 activities:
1. Evaluate and refine the disability training offered to USF medical students (USF Disability Module).
2. Establish continuing education training on disability to medical and allied health Providers.
Medical Student Disability Module Description:
This project is a collaborative effort with the University of South Florida and the Florida Office on Disability and Health at the University of Florida. The University of South Florida provides disability training to all medical students. The Primary Care Clerkship includes a disability module (Focus on Special Populations) as part of the required core curriculum for third year medical students. Every year, 120 medical students spend 8-16 half days in a disability related activity including:
◊ Didactic sessions.
◊ Hands-on clinical training with children and adults with disabilities.
◊ Students learn about living with a disability through visiting community sites including group homes for people with developmental disabilities and visiting persons with disabilities in their homes.
Disability Module Evaluation: Anecdotally, students report that they found the module enlightening, gained respect for persons with disabilities, and experienced diminished anxiety about caring for people with disabilities. We found statistically significant improvement in student?s attitudes toward persons with disabilities, student?s knowledge of disabilities, and student?s comfort providing care to persons with disabilities after participating in this module compared to pre-test.
Continuing Education Training on Disability:
We developed one online disability training module on Healthcare Access for Persons with Disabilities that focuses on physical and sensory disabilities and is accredited for continuing education for Florida physicians, nurses, and mental health providers. A second online training is being developed that will focus on healthcare access for persons with developmental disabilities. This training will also be available online and will have national accreditation for physicians, nurses, and certified health education specialists. We hope to launch this second training August 2010.
Expected Benefits:
We expect that providing disability training to healthcare providers will increase the community's capacity to meet the healthcare needs of people with disabilities.
