Overview

Disability Inclusive Compassionate Care (DICC) 2.0 will equip a cohort of health-professional educators (HPEs) to train medical students on disability competencies through the use of the following arts-based methods: Poetry, Graphic Medicine, Disability Ethics, and Theater of the Oppressed. Using these tools from the health humanities, experienced facilitators will impart an understanding of disability competencies in a manner that is distinct from the methods in which medicine is traditionally taught and learnt.

Rationale

Following the success of DICC (Disability Inclusive Compassionate Care), a UCMS and UChicago project from 2018-2019, DICC 2.0 aims to implement the disability competencies that were framed during DICC. Those competencies were incorporated into the Indian national medical curriculum by the National Medical Commission, the national education regulatory body.

These competencies are observable behaviours, based on the human rights model of disability, by which healthcare providers can ensure that they actively make the care-seeking process inclusive for those who are disabled. Arts-based methods from the health humanities are innovative and effective tools for imparting these competencies.

Progress till date

Four series of workshops on theatre of the oppressed, poetry, graphic medicine, and disability ethics have been conducted online and in-person with medical faculty from across institutes in the Maharashtra University of Health Sciences.

In the present phase, these teaching-learning methods are being used in parallel with one another by the original cohort of medical professionals, who are piloting these methods for their students in their respective institutions in India and the United States.

Partner/s

• Maharashtra University of Health Sciences, Nashik, India

• University College of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India

• Jamia Hamdard, New Delhi, India

• Kasturba Medical College, Manipal, India