The preparation and practice of disabled health care practitioners: exploring the issues

Regulatory bodies governing health professions and professional education set clear expectations regarding fitness to practise. Within the United Kingdom the Equality Act, 2010, poses a challenge to regulators, educators and employers to ensure that people are not excluded on the basis of disability and to facilitate inclusion. This research took a mixed methods approach to exploring the tensions between Higher Education providers and placement providers in the health sector. Disabled and non disabled students and health professionals engaged in semi structured interviews and a survey in order to explore their beliefs and experiences. The findings suggest that applying equality legislation within health settings may be particularly difficult and that ‘disability’ is an ambiguous and multifaceted concept. Whilst small in scale, the findings have given a voice to a professional group who are underrepresented in research and have raised a number of important issues that merit discussion and further scrutiny.