“We are blind to quite a lot of things”: perspectives of a communications curriculum enlisting persons with disability (PWD) as patient educators and its impact on medical professional identity formation

BACKGROUND: Attitudinal barriers toward persons with disability (PWD) persist in healthcare systems, with lack of awareness and experience impeding optimal treatment of PWD. Medical professional identity formation, which can be described as the transformative integration of both clinical acumen and humanistic attitudes, needs to include exposure to and interactions with PWD. A communications workshop was devised for third-year medical students with PWD enlisted as patient educators. We aimed to understand students' and tutors' perspectives of the workshop, the meaning they gained from interacting with PWD, and how the workshop contributed to their professional identity formation. METHODS: Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with 13 students and 7 tutors, and analysed with thematic analysis following an inductive approach until reaching thematic saturation. Coding occurred independently, and researchers met to discuss their findings and integrate different perspectives and codes into a final set of themes and subthemes. RESULTS: Themes derived included how medical students and tutors started their medical education journey with an aspiration to care; how values that contribute to professional identity formation are acquired in a learning community (direct experience, modelling behaviour, reflection and through authentic conversation); the educational value of PWD as patient educators in medical training (the historical absence of disability in curriculum, tutors co-learning with students from PWD educators, the uncertainty of long-term impact); and the impact of the PWD educator patient voice in professional identity formation. CONCLUSIONS: The PWD educator voice may develop sensitivity and empathy for PWD. First person narratives of their perspectives, challenges, and triumphs has the potential to challenge learners' preconceived notions, strengthen confidence of learners in interacting with PWD, and promote social inclusiveness of PWD as a facet of ongoing student and clinician professional identity formation.