ABSTRACT
Background: There is an increasing need for a standardized undergraduate disability curriculum for medical students to better equip students with the proper training, knowledge, and skills to provide holistic care for individuals with disabilities. Objectives: The aim of this scoping review was to better understand and analyze the current body of literature focusing on best practice for including disability curricula and its impact on undergraduate medical students. Results: Three major components for designing a disability curriculum for undergraduate medical students were obtained from our analysis. The components were: (1) effective teaching strategies, (2) competencies required for disability curriculum, and (3) impact of disability curriculum on medical students. Conclusions: Current literature revealed that exposing medical students to a disability curriculum impacted their overall perceptions about people with disabilities. This allowed them to develop a sense of understanding towards patients with disabilities during their clinical encounters. The effectiveness of a disability curriculum is dependent on the extent to which these interventions are incorporated into undergraduate medical education.
Contexte: On constate un besoin croissant de créer une formation uniforme sur le handicap dans le cadre des études médicales de premier cycle afin de les doter des connaissances et des compétences nécessaires pour prodiguer des soins holistiques aux personnes handicapées. Objectifs: Le but de cette revue de la portée était de mieux cerner la littérature scientifique décrivant les meilleures pratiques pour l'élaboration d'un programme d'enseignement sur le handicap et les incidences d'un tel programme sur les étudiants en médecine de premier cycle. Résultats: Nous avons pu dégager trois éléments principaux dont il convient de tenir compte lors de la conception d'un programme d'enseignement sur le handicap au prédoctorat : (1) l'efficacité des stratégies pédagogiques, (2) les compétences à le cadre de la formation sur le handicap, et (3) les incidences de la formation sur les étudiants. Conclusions: La littérature révèle qu'une formation sur le handicap a des incidences sur la manière générale dont les étudiants en médecine perçoivent les personnes qui en souffrent. Par suite d'une telle formation, les étudiants font davantage preuve de compréhension envers les patients lors de leurs rencontres cliniques. L'efficacité d'une formation sur le handicap dépend du degré de son intégration dans le cursus médical de premier cycle.
Subject(s)
Disabled Persons , Education, Medical, Undergraduate , Students, Medical , Humans , CurriculumABSTRACT
Prenatal alcohol exposure is a cause of congenital brain malformations such as hydrocephalus; however, a complete mechanism accounting for this phenomenon has yet to be discovered. We report a case of a newborn who was exposed to alcohol throughout pregnancy and presented with low serum vitamin A and hydrocephalus. To our knowledge, the connection between prenatal ethanol exposure, vitamin A deficiency, and a developmental brain anomaly has never been described in humans before. A possible mechanism may be mediated by disruption of the homeostasis of vitamin A, an important morphogen in the developing nervous system. This, in turn, compromises the activity of the floor plate, a structure in charge of polarization and midline formation in the neural tube. We conclude that vitamin A screening and supplementation might be recommended for newborns of mothers who ingested ethanol during pregnancy.