June 24, 2020

New Book on Disability as Diversity led by Meeks and Family Medicine Faculty

Edited by Lisa Meeks, Disability as Diversity is a first-of-its-kind title designed to help deans, program directors, faculty and student affairs personnel thoughtfully plan for the growing population of health care professionals with disabilities.

 

Disability as Diversity Chapter 5: Wellness and Disability: Leave of absence policies for students with disabilities can be unexpectedly and unintentionally harmful. Many administrators and faculty falsely believe that students with psychological disabili
An excerpt from Disability as Diversity: A Guidebook for Inclusion in Medicine, Nursing, and the Health Professions, a new book co-edited by Lisa M. Meeks, with contributions from several U-M Family Medicine faculty, published by Springer Nature in June 2020.

The benefits of diversity in healthcare are becoming increasingly apparent and important and a commitment to disability inclusion for qualified students should be a high-level goal of nursing, medical, and other health science programs. To support this goal, leaders in these areas must develop robust programs and an understanding of the needs of qualified students with disabilities in the health sciences and accompanying best practices for inclusion. 

This new resource, Disability as Diversity: A Guidebook for Inclusion in Medicine, Nursing, and the Health Professions, is a first-of-its-kind title designed to help deans, program directors, faculty and student affairs personnel thoughtfully plan for the growing population of health-care professionals with disabilities while making legally defensible decisions. The content helps stakeholders contextualize disability inclusion in health-care education as a function of social justice and a mechanism of reducing health care disparities for patients. It offers pragmatic advice, grounded in research, best practice, and case law to address the highly nuanced approach to determining and implementing accommodations in a high-stakes clinical environment. 

Lisa Meeks, Ph.D., Assistant Professor
Lisa M. Meeks, Ph.D., M.A., Co-Editor of Disability as Diversity

Disability as Diversity was edited by Lisa M. Meeks, Ph.D., M.A., assistant professor and lead MDisability program faculty, and Leslie Neal-Boylan, PhD, APRN, CRRN, FAAN, of the Solomont School of Nursing at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. The book features contributing chapters from several family medicine and University of Michigan faculty and staff, including:

  • A chapter on technical standards co-written by Michael M. McKee, M.D., M.P.H., associate professor of family medicine

  • A chapter on Clinical Accommodations and Simulation co-written by James M. Cooke, M.D., associate professor of family medicine and Executive Director of the Clinical Simulation Center

  • Chapters on Creating a Program Within a Culture of Inclusion; Clinical Accommodations and Simulation; Wellness and Disability; Physician Licensing, Career, and Practice; and Remediate and Dismissal in Nursing and Medicine Programs When Students Fail, co-written by Lisa M. Meeks, Ph.D., M.A., assistant professor

  • A forward from Philip Zazove, M.D., professor and the George A. Dean, M.D. Chair of Family Medicine

Disability as Diversity forward form Philip Zazove, MD: We've come a long way from the last millennium, when I was a young child, a time when people with disabilities were almost never given opportunities to succeed to a world where the value of disabilit
An excerpt from the forward of Disability as Diversity: A Guidebook for Inclusion in Medicine, Nursing, and the Health Professions, written by Philip Zazove, M.D. The book was edited by Lisa Meeks, Ph.D., M.A. and is available now from Springer Publishers.
READ ALSO: Monthly Podcast Shares The Stories of #DocsWithDisabilities 

The book also features contributions from several University of Michigan faculty, staff, and graduates, including: 

How to Access Disability as Diversity

The book is published by Springer Nature and is available now. Proceeds from the book will be donated to the U-M Family Medicine's MDisability program. The book is also available through many academic libraries. This week, authors and readers has sparked conversation on Twitter using the hashtag #DisabilityAsDiversity.

READ ALSO: More medical students are disclosing their disabilities, and schools are responding, study finds