Nursing Education For Dealing Disabilities

How Deal With Disabilities and Nursing Education

What are Disabilities,Effect of Disestablishes In Education,Dealing With Disabilities,Impact of Disabilities on Educational Activities.

What are Disabilities

    The World Health Organization (WHO) defines disability as an umbrella term that includes impairment (problems in body function or structure), activity limitations (difficulties encountered by an individual in executing a task or action), and participation restrictions (problems experienced by an individual in involvement in life situations; WHO, 2001). The International Council of Nurses (ICN, 2010) defines disability as a physical, mental, sensory, or social impairment that adversely affects individuals' ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities in the long term.

Effect of Disestablishes In Education

    The care of persons with disabilities, including intellectual and developmental disabilities, is an essential topic for nursing education. The bio-psychosocial model of disability (US Department of Health and Human Services [USDHHS], 2005) emphasizes the view that disability arises from the interaction of physical, emotional, and environmental factors. This model ensures that students learn to communicate effectively and sensitively with persons with disabilities. Students learn to consider the effect of the disability on the health condition. 

    In addition, they also learn how treatment of the health condition affects the disability. In selecting a model of disability, a key issue is the view of the role of individuals with a disability in their health care. Other models of disability ( eg , medical and rehabilitation models) consider health care professionals as the experts on disability, without recognizing the life experiences of individuals living with the disability.

    Innovative approaches are needed to ensure that nursing students have the requisite knowledge, attitudes, and skills to provide quality care for patients with disabilities across health care settings, from acute and long-term care facilities to outpatient facilities, the home, and the community (Gardner, 2012).

Dealing With Disabilities

    The need for nursing education to address disability is based on the sizable and growing population of people with disabilities: almost 60 million people in the United States (US Census Bureau, 2010) and more than a billion people worldwide (WHO and World Bank, 2011 ). Disability affects people across all age groups, both genders, and all socioeconomic and racial and ethnic groups, and disproportionately affects marginalized, disadvantaged, or at-risk groups, including women, older people, and people who are poor. Despite having disabilities that can be severe, most people with disabilities make significant contributions to their families, communities, and work and educational settings (National Council on

    Disabilities, 2012). Although people with disabilities have the same health needs as those without disabilities for immunization, health promotion, preventive health screening, and high-quality health care many encounter barriers to care. These barriers include negative attitudes and lack of knowledge of health care professionals, including nurses (Gardner, 2012; Smeltzer , Avery, & Haynor , 2012), and environmental obstacles ( eg , inaccessible buildings, rest rooms, health centers. and imaging centers, and absence of accommodations, such as height adjustable and mammography equipment).

    The Americans with Disabilities Act, enacted in 1990 and amended in 2008, prohibits discrimination because of disability US Department of Labor, Office of Disability and Employment Policy (1990). However, people with disabilities reported continued barriers to health care. In response, multiple national and international agencies ( eg , the US Surgeon General's Office; USDHHS 2005; ICN, 2010: WHO, 2011) have called for health care professionals to be better educated about disability. 

    The ICN's 2000 position statement on disability, revised in 2010, explicitly states that nurses are key to the health care of people with disabilities and need to be involved in health promotion, teaching, and counseling of people with disabilities and their families (2010). Nurse educators need to ensure that students achieve competencies needed to provide care for people with disabilities:

    The ICN (2010) also calls for professional nursing organizations to advocate for public policy directed toward improved health care of people with disabilities, despite the strong and explicit position of the ICN about nurses' role and the need for nursing to address disability, the topic remains largely invisible in nursing education (Betz, 2013: Gardner, 2012: Smeltzer , Dolen , Robinson-Smith, & Zimmerman, 2005) None of the organizations that establish standards of nursing care in the United States or accredit nursing education programs identify care of people with disabilities as part of those standards or criteria on which nursing education is evaluated.

Impact of Disabilities on Educational Activities

    Students typically enter nursing programs with little or no experience or previous contact with people with disabilities. Their attitudes toward people with disabilities are similar to those of the general population and are often negative. Thus, strategies that expose nursing students to people with disabilities through clinical experiences, simulations of patients with disabilities, or the use of standardized patients with disabilities are recommended. Visits to persons with disabilities in their homes can open students' eyes to the ability of persons with disabilities to live and function effectively and independently in their home and community, a view that is often unexpected by students

    Use of disability days, in which students are put in situations to experience a disability for an hour or two by wearing glasses that impede vision or requiring them to move around in a wheelchair, is not recommended by the disability community because it can result in very negative attitudes about disability in students. Alternatively, such short term experiences may result in an undesirable conclusion by students that having a disability is not a significant issue. Having individuals with disabilities participate in teaching of nursing students through panel discussions or simulations with carefully planned standardized patient experiences are likely to be more effective than the disability day experiences.

    Faculty members knowledgeable or at least interested in disability can serve as champions and review nursing curricula to identify where disability related topics and experiences can be integrated. Furthermore, they can also select from the array of resources, materials that faculty can use to learn about and teach students about disability, to promote positive attitudes toward patients with disabilities in clinical practice, to provide care that is equal to that given to patients without disabilities, and to advocate for public policy to improve care for people with disabilities. Research is needed to test different teaching approaches and their effect on care of people with disabilities.