Increasing health advocacy among health care providers who care for people with I/DD: Impact of a new curriculum

Aim

Medical students and residents often receive less than three hours of education regarding health care issues and needs of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD). This lack of knowledge and experience among physicians can translate into negative attitudes further compromising the provision of culturally appropriate, accessible, acceptable, and equitable health care. This study aims to describe the attitudes of physicians in pediatric residency programs in caring for adolescents with I/DD and to test the efficacy of a training using an innovative curriculum titled “Health Advocacy Curriculum.”

Method

Thirty eight pediatric residents received a two hour health advocacy training to increase their knowledge, improve attitudes, and enhance self-efficacy towards health advocacy for adolescents with I/DD.

Results

In working with patients with I/DD, baseline data showed 76% of the residents lacked experience, 87% did not feel confident in being able to communicate with someone who is non-verbal, 16% were not comfortable interacting with patients with I/DD, 64% were not confident in discussing transition information effectively to parents and adolescents, 87% stated that they did not feel adequately trained, and 95% stated that they would be able to provide better health care for if they had more education and training. Following training, pediatric residents had improved knowledge scores (t = -6.533, p = .000) and self-efficacy scores (t = -3.626, p = .001).

Conclusions

This curriculum has the potential to improve physicians' capacity to understand the unique needs of adolescents with I/DD to enhance quality health care for individuals with I/DD.