Be ready to address disability microaggressions in medicine

Abstract

Most disability services practitioners agree that the medical model of disability, with its focus on curing the individual's intrinsic problem , is problematic for students with disabilities and academia more broadly. This is especially salient for medicine. The few medical students with disabilities who matriculate and self‐identify may be relegated to the medical model of disability, being viewed as flawed and limited in their potential for practicing medicine. Leslie Neal‐Boylan and colleagues suggested in 2012 that this model is the reason medical providers with invisible disabilities frequently choose not to self‐identify.