Abstract:

Recently, the UN and the WHO have expressed strong concerns about the inequality experienced by people with disabilities in accessing health services. People with disabilities nowadays live longer and therefore face a number of health problems that have not been previously dealt with. In order to improve the accessibility and quality of health services for people with disabilities, more attention must be paid to the readiness and ability of health professionals to work with people with disabilities. Health professionals receive a lot of knowledge about diseases and their treatment, but this is not sufficient for successful work with people with disabilities. People with disabilities suffer from the same diseases as all other people, but their relationship with the disease, its course, and its consequences are different. Therefore, health professionals need specific knowledge to work with people with disabilities. Learning in healthcare specialists’ education has been dominated by the biomedical paradigm for centuries. It has become increasingly apparent that understanding the scientific basis of diseases, diagnoses, and treatments is necessary but not sufficient for nowadays’ healthcare professions. Disability studies are neglected in medical education and, consequently, in practice. This current study introduces data from interviews with students and teachers about learning barriers regarding disability in healthcare education programs in Lithuania. The results show that disability is not integrated into healthcare education. Thus, future specialists do not recognize their attitude toward disability as an individual problem. Even though both students and professors clearly demonstrate a positive and empathic attitude toward people with disabilities, nevertheless, the general positive attitude is in an ambivalent relationship with the professional attitude, grounded in the medical model of disability.

Keywords:

Healthcare education, disability studies, learning barriers.