Doctors must challenge ableism in healthcare

Today, people with disabilities continue to be unfairly overlooked and discriminated against—whether that’s in terms of employment, education, media representation, or relationships. If you’re disabled, people assume that you lack the required elements for full participation in society. Disabilities are consistently seen as synonymous with deficit, tragedy, and loss. It would be wrong to assume that doctors and allied healthcare professionals are immune from these systemic prejudices. If our medical system wants to enhance care for disabled patients it’s imperative that we tackle these outdated misconceptions.In recent years society has become more mindful of the shameful grip that unconscious bias has on us and how our attitudes and personal judgments towards people may be influenced by the stigma surrounding certain identities. Racial bias, for instance, infiltrates nearly every branch of the healthcare system: notable examples include obstetrics, where maternal mortality is four times as high in black women as in…
Read Original Article: Doctors must challenge ableism in healthcare »