Autistic doctors: leveraging insider perspectives to improve healthcare for autistic people

Autistic people experience poor healthcare outcomes and reduced life expectancy compared to non-autistic people. Recognition that doctors can be autistic is recent. This thesis presents the first ever series of publications by openly autistic medical doctors, with the intention being to explore the experiences of autistic doctors, and to improve healthcare and quality of life for autistic people. Alongside four original research papers relating to autism, healthcare, and autistic healthcare providers, I present an educational framework which offers a potential solution to the problems identified in my research. Utilising our insider positioning as both autistic people and medical doctors, we leverage our knowledge and perspectives on medicine and medical education to pitch this Autistic SPACE framework to be as accessible as possible to non-specialist medical colleagues. • Doherty M, Neilson S, O’Sullivan J, Carravallah L, Johnson M, Cullen W, Shaw SCK. Barriers to healthcare and self-reported adverse outcomes for autistic adults: a cross-sectional study. BMJOpen. 2022;12:e056904. • Shaw SCK, Carravallah L, Johnson M, O’Sullivan J, Chown N, Neilson S, Doherty M. Barriers to healthcare and a ‘triple empathy problem’ may lead to adverse outcomes for autistic adults: a qualitative study. Autism. 2024;28(7):1746-57. • Doherty M, McCowan S, Shaw SCK. Autistic SPACE: a novel framework for meeting the needs of autistic people in healthcare settings. British Journal of Hospital Medicine. 2023;84(4):1-9. • Shaw SCK, Fossi A, Carravallah LA, Rabenstein K, Ross W, Doherty M. The experiences of autistic doctors: a cross-sectional study. Frontiers in Psychiatry. 2023;14:1160994 • Doherty M, Chown N, Martin N, Shaw SCK. Autistic psychiatrists’ experiences of recognising themselves and others as autistic: qualitative study. BJPsych Open. 2024;DOI: 10.1192/bjo.2024.756). The overarching goal of my work is to increase awareness of neurodiversity in medicine and improve healthcare provision and outcomes for autistic people.