title: Medical Schools' Willingness to Accommodate Medical Students with Sensory and Physical Disabilities: Ethical Foundations of a Functional Challenge to "Organic" Technical Standards.
abstract: Students with sensory and physical disabilities are underrepresented in medical schools despite the availability of assistive technologies and accommodations. Unfortunately, many medical schools have adopted restrictive "organic" technical standards based on deficits rather than on the ability to do the work. Compelling ethical considerations of justice and beneficence should prompt change in this arena. Medical schools should instead embrace "functional" technical standards that permit accommodations for disabilities and update their admissions policies to promote applications from qualified students with disabilities. Medical schools thus should focus on what students with disabilities can do, rather than what they cannot do, because these students further diversify the health care profession and improve our ability to care for an expanding population of patients with disabilities.
authors: Assistant professor in the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor.
authors: Michael
authors: M
authors: McKee
authors: MPH candidate at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at The George Washington University in Washington, DC, and a chapter advisor for Global Bridges, a global health organization.
authors: Ben
authors: B
authors: Case
authors: Maureen
authors: M
authors: Fausone
authors: Professor in and chair of the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Michigan Health System in Ann Arbor.
authors: Philip
authors: P
authors: Zazove
authors: President and dean of Albany Law School in Albany, New York.
authors: Alicia
authors: A
authors: Ouellette
authors: Professor of family medicine at the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor, where he is also co-director of the Department of Family Medicine, co-director of the University of Michigan Mixed Methods Research and Scholarship Program, co-editor of the Journal of Mixed Methods Research, and founder and director of the Japanese Family Health Program.
authors: Michael D
authors: MD
authors: Fetters
mesh_terms: D026686:Beneficence; D004185:Disability Evaluation; D006233:Persons with Disabilities; D004501:Education, Medical / Q000941:ethics*; D006801:Humans; D016134:Organizational Policy; D012570:School Admission Criteria; D012577:Schools, Medical; D063508:Social Discrimination; D012935:Social Justice; D013337:Students, Medical