Bowen et al.’s scholarly article comes from the Disability and Health Journal and explains the insufficient approaches to people with disabilities in the health care workforce and biased opinions based on the quality or function of their life given by employees. The authors introduce the notion of implementing disability training for healthcare providers while also addressing real organizations and their effort. Two initiatives are proposed in the article: The Disability Competencies and the DCC (Disability Competent Care) model. Both approaches would demonstrate high-quality health care by being more personable and allowing for more access to care, improving responsiveness, and enabling support. The authors use these two initiatives to provide a foundation for a future disability-competent health care workforce. The Disability Competencies consists of objectives that hone in on specific skills and behaviors that would provide quality health care to those with disabilities. At the same time, the DCC model would demonstrate structure to give disability competence training to the health care workforce. The authors stress the urge for systematic change in interprofessional health education and are confident that these initiatives would establish a place to start. Although both initiatives have slightly different objectives, both, when implemented, would improve the health care for people with disabilities by educating the health care workforce.
Looks like a good contribution to the conversation, though we could use a bit more explanation of how the authors arrive at these recommendations. Help us to understand the research they’re building on, so that we can better understand why it’s worth thinking about these approaches.