Families teach med students about disabilities
January 8th, 2009Medical school is not so good at helping aspiring doctors understand the non-medical struggles that patients face, Sacha Pfeiffer reports on WBUR, an NPR affiliate station in Boston. A group of Harvard Medical School students is reaching out to patients and their families to learn what textbooks haven’t taught them about people who live with genetic disorders.
Along the way, the students get an earful about battling insurance companies, struggles with accessibility, and kids who ostracize their classmates.
An excerpt:
STUDENT: Do kids ever ask you about your condition or what it’s like to be in a wheelchair ever?
ZACHARY HEGER, 16: Not really. I don’t like to tell them because they usually make fun of me and stuff.
STUDENT: What would you like them to know about what it’s like?
ZACHARY HEGER: They should just have a class that teaches them about people in wheelchairs — treat them like they’re a normal person and not like an alien.
This entry was posted
on Thursday, January 8th, 2009 at 2:30 pm and is filed under NOT2BEMISSED, education, genetics, public attitudes, stigma, wheelchair.
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