Introduction
The prevalence of medical students with disabilities is increasing, however, the proportion of individuals reporting disability remains markedly low. Students often avoid requesting accommodations and disclosing their disabilities for fear of bias, stigma, and misperceptions about performance. Due to apprehension towards traditional support structures, it is imperative that students be provided specialized mentorship opportunities.
Methods
We sought to create student-run mentorship initiatives at Michigan Medicine. Feedback was gathered from the Michigan Medicine student-body and the Learning and Disability Specialist, evaluating the need for disability and chronic illness related programming within the medical school. Results were used to inform program planning, thereby increasing foundational support of this student population. Our goal was to update Disability Connect, a program created in 2021 to provide one-on-one pairings between students with disabilities and student/resident mentors with similar life experiences. Specifically, we aimed to expand involvement by implementing group events and providing coffee shop gift cards to incentivize meeting in individual pairings. This removed the burden of planning from participants, increasing retention.
Results
We created disability related programming, including a resident panel in March 2023, giving insight into medical training with a disability or chronic illness. Participants learned about hurdles in training and received information regarding accommodations in clinical rotations. In addition, we created a mentorship program for students, connecting participants with peers and residents with similar conditions. 13 pairings were created and provided coffee shop gift cards to encourage connecting in person. In the coming months, we will survey participants to evaluate program success.
Conclusions
As the prevalence of disability increases, it is important that students have access to mentorship without disclosing their disabilities to the university. This program will continue to be tailored to student needs.