Case conference and para case conference: asking different questions about disability and structural ableism

What might it mean to change the questions we ask during clinical case conferences and to ask different kinds of questions, both in case conferences and more broadly in our clinics, care conferences and research? How might conducting 'para case conferences' with diverse stakeholders, community members and scholars invigorate conversation and surface different kinds of concerns? By 'para,' I draw from all of the meanings of the prefix, including alongside of, beside, near, resembling, beyond, apart from and abnormal. In this essay, I discuss a 'traditional' hospital-based case conference about a young deaf woman who would like to undergo cochlear implant surgery and I compare it to two 'para case conferences' that I organised with disability studies scholars in the humanities, social sciences and public health, in which we analyzed the same case and had a very different discussion. I argue, drawing on disability studies, medical anthropology and disability ethics scholarship, that we must actively consider and confront the role of structural ableism and the ways that it constrains the kinds of questions and horizons of possibility we imagine for patients and for disabled flourishing more broadly.