The impact of inclusion: Improving medical student confidence in caring for adults with intellectual disabilities through an interactive, narrative-based session

ABSTRACT

Background

There is often very little training during medical school focused on how to provide care to individuals with intellectual disabilities. This curriculum gap results in students reporting low levels of confidence in their ability to care for this population.

Methods

Medical students attended an interactive, narrative-based session on caring for individuals with intellectual disabilities. Student confidence was assessed through pre- and post-session surveys.

Results

Students reported low levels of confidence in their overall ability to provide care to people with intellectual disabilities, but this level significantly increased following the course session. Student confidence also increased significantly across all learning objectives.

Conclusions

The success of this session provides additional support for the importance of including individuals with intellectual disabilities within the medical school curriculum; however, we must continue to advocate for more longitudinal educational opportunities in this field to ensure current and future physicians can provide care to this population.

KEYWORDS:

• Medical education
• curriculum
• medical school
• medical student
• intellectual disability

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge Dr. Lan Xiao for assistance with statistical analysis.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).