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Final Program


Final Program

Administrative / Leadership / Education

1813 - Advancing Medical Education Through Patient-Focused Longitudinal Disability Curriculum

Friday, February 20, 2026
5:00 PM - 6:30 PM AST
Objectives: In the US, cognitive and physical disability is common with 26.8% of people reporting some form of disability. Patients with disabilities report significant barriers to care and decreased satisfaction. However, medical students are infrequently trained to appropriately care for this population, especially intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD).

Design: Recognizing the lack of comprehensive instruction on this topic, we developed a longitudinal curriculum supported by a NICHE grant from AADMD. The curriculum included a precepted small group discussion with patient self-advocates, a reflection assignment on clinical experience with a patient with disabilities from the Longitudinal Clerkship with narrative feedback, enhanced didactic content, and clinical skills workshop on examining and transferring a patient in a wheelchair and examining an autistic patient featuring self-advocates. A pre-survey assessed baseline knowledge and familiarity with disability and IDD. A post-survey was conducted after completion of the curriculum to assess changes in knowledge and familiarity. Analysis of the pre-survey and post-survey was performed using an unpaired Student’s t-test. 

Results: 132 students completed the pre-survey (91% response rate) and 131 students completed the post-survey (95% response rate). Students responded on a 5-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree). Analysis of the surveys showed that students felt that they received adequate training and felt comfortable caring for people with IDD with the curriculum (p< 0.05). After the curriculum, students felt more confident providing care for people with IDD (p< 0.05).

Conclusions: Preliminary data suggest the curriculum increased student preparedness for working with patients with disability and IDD. After completing the 18-month curriculum, students were more confident providing care for this population. However, students commented that they would need more exposure to enhance their confidence. Therefore, future data will be collected during clerkships to evaluate the long-term impact and identify opportunities to strengthen IDD training for medical students.