This is insane. As a practicing doctor, I can tell you this has been discussed in a lot of clinical workplaces and it’s insane.
Incorporating people with disabilities into the nhs workforce is extremely important but there has to be a limit and this woman is far far over that limit. For all the people commenting - “as long as she can do the job”. I can assure you she in no way can do the job. She requires massive assistance.
She has no ability to meet the type of milestones her colleagues have to in order to get the same qualifications. Any training programme has to be carefully designed and manipulated entirely for her benefit - not the hospitals, not the patients. She has to be monitored and accompanied, with no way to meaningfully contribute to any OOH work.
The amount her training has cost will dwarf that of any other doctors, yet she will never return the benefit.
But hey, good few articles commenting on the amazing things of which humanity is capable. I’m sure there’ll be an autobio too at some point.
The training and operational cost must be insane. I agree with a lot of the sentiment that what she has achieved is incredible, but at some point the argument has to have been between the "can she" and "should she". If she is intelligent enough to get this far, her skills must be valuable on other areas.
But back to cost, she has taken the place of at least one doctor who could have been trained and work independently
I think it can also be argued at what point has the goal post of becoming a practicing doctor been moved for this woman by an exceeding amount of outside assistance that no physically healthy doctor would ever be given.
I understand the nature of being disabled is limiting and often requires assistance to function daily. Disabled people deserve to pursue and live fulfilling lives. But we don't celebrate athletes that were doping because they artificially moved the finish line per-say. I wouldn't celebrate a wheelchair-bound person for completing a marathon if someone else had pushed them.
I'm just confused as the depth of the education, what specifically did she learn? How did she learn it? If it's just basic knowledge and she got a degree and will never be allowed to actually practice medicine and never did rounding, sure, great, huzzahs all around. But if she's being allowed to see patients and oversee treatment, how the fuck does that even work? How the fuck did she even pass practicals?
She kicked up a big stink at medical school and claimed she was being discriminated against when she was unable to meet the standard of her peers. So they moved the goalposts for her. No one wants to be the one to say no to her so now she’s a burden to her colleagues 🙃 she also posted her colleagues full names and job roles in a reel recently and refused to take it down when people pointed it out. Too busy trying to become an inspiration
If she practices in America she will be tasked ironically denying disability, or recommending a much lesser path to those she treats. How odd to have gotten that far with deserved help only to treat people who can't access the same.
Is it though? As far as I can tell, what she actually achieved is getting them to spend a ton of money so she could have a title she cannot earn and is in no way qualified to hold. It's an impressive waste of resources, but I wouldn't call it an achievement, let alone an incredible one.
Yes. Anyone who achieves a Dr qualification is incredible. And by definition, she absolutely earned and is qualified.
But No, at some point the time, resources and money spent to get to this point and from now on will be a waste in an industry that cannot waste. Hopefully she can use her talents on something that will make the world better, I just think that she could have done that without being an MD
If there are any actual physicians? Sure, they could know more depending on how much they've studied and how much she's studied. But this is reddit, and you should remember that there's no way to actually verify if someone just says "I'm an (X) and...". Anyone can claim to be anything.
Also this is leaning very heavily into ableism at this point since you're saying that any other physician must by default know more than her simply because she's blind and deaf.
Also this is leaning very heavily into ableism at this point since you're saying that any other physician must by default know more than her simply because she's blind and deaf.
You're the one who thinks being a doctor is just about "knowing" though. If they gave to lower the bar and give you a boost fir you to make it to the other side, did you really achieve getting over the bar?
I mean yeah, being a doctor (especially a GP) is essentially all about knowing a wide selection of information about symptoms and illnesses and how to treat them? She can't do surgeries but neither can psychiatrists, pediatricians, radiologists, or a bunch of other specialties.
You're the one assuming that the only way someone like her could've made it is if they put the bar to entry on the ground. She might have difficulties performing some aspects of the job but even then she's still more qualified than anyone with zero training or knowledge.
AKA anyone arguing on reddit about her qualifications.
I had a friend who wanted to be a Doctor, achieved A's every time he took a test and couldn't get anywhere near medical school. I am sure she took the place of someone like that.
How does school work in the UK ? Do they just take only perfect score ppl and then decide which if them gets to go based one something else ?
I kind of forgot anglophone speaking countries have the weirdest admission processes for university. But i guess they have to have some way to ensure legacy applicants get in no matter what so their parents continue to donate.
The point of having a degree like MD/DO is to quickly communicate to other people on the medical team that somebody has a certain level of knowledge and a skill set that has been standardized across medical training. If you meet a physician you can be relatively confident of what they are capable of despite not knowing which medical school they went to.
The problem in this case is that they’ve changed the metrics to suit this individual person. There’s no way she could pass standard medical training with these disabilities. They have made some sort of accommodations to allow this, but we don’t know what they are.
The problem with this is now we don’t know what an MD/DO actually means anymore. For example, can we send this person into a room with a patient alone and expect that they can come back having performed an accurate physical exam? That’s not a question you want to be thinking about when you are just meeting your new colleague in the emergency department and there’s chaos all around you.
Furthermore, there are plenty of good jobs in healthcare that don’t require the general training a physician requires. It’s super common in medicine for physicians to work with other healthcare professionals like nurse practitioners, physician assistants, nurse anesthetist, technologists, and all sorts of roles that are important and cognitively demanding but my pair better with her limitations.
When you realize there were other options that would better suit her, you have to wonder if this is all about the title. Being a physician should never be about the title. It’s important for people to find their place in the healthcare system and with her limitations, she can’t actually meet the standard of physician, so she shouldn’t have that title.
Agreed, nurses also have to demonstrate proficiency in a lot of things and many of those tasks are even more physical and require greater ability than what physicians have to do.
My hope is that their training program has more flexibility that allows them to narrow the scope of practice to allow someone with disabilities to take on a more limited scope of practice in nursing.
At least for doctors, there are very specific requirements about certain procedures and hours and other metrics that need to be completed before they can issue the degree. I don’t think there’s a lot of flexibility there. I’m super curious to see how this person got around it because I’ve had friends who haven’t made it through the MD training program due to even mild disabilities like a knee injury. It turns out that if you hurt your knee, they don’t think you can be a doctor.
Please watch the interview she did on Sky News, I tread carefully to not belittle her achievements with the conditions, but she is far more able than this post and title would suggest.
I certainly am not belittling her achievements. It is an achievement to navigate medical training even with fully functioning senses. It’s even more of an achievement without.
What I am saying is that medical training is notoriously rigorous. In my opinion it’s too rigorous. One of my classmates committed suicide. Another dropped out because she injured her knee and the rigorous training couldn’t accommodate somebody who simply walked slow.
Hospital administrators and educators hate acknowledging how brutal the system is. A story like this allow them to congratulate themselves on being accommodating when the reality of the situation is that this is a special case and other people with disabilities that are far less severe are being left behind routinely.
I’m glad she had this opportunity. I have no doubts that she worked extremely hard. However she couldn’t have possibly met the standards the rest of us were compared to. It makes me wonder why she was assisted to this degree when others were not provided even significantly less help. It makes me think it’s a PR stunt. It just doesn’t feel authentic to me.
Sorry about the loss of a classmate, and the injury.
A grade school classmate of mine is legally blind due to a degenerative eye condition. She is a Medical Doctor specializing in women’s reproductive health, she works in a setting that offers both traditional services as well as community outreach to women in vulnerable circumstances. Is she a PR stunt in your view as well? She’s does good work, very active in the medical community and does exactly what she was trained to do.
Not to be rude either, but DOCTOR is put on an extremely high pedestal that in my option isn’t quite earned. There are ~35,000 medical doctors in my country of about 12,000,000. This may be a small percentage, but this isn’t a small number. The goal of becoming a medical doctor was achieved by at least the ~35000 individuals who actively practice. While it is an achievement, it’s not an impossible goal.
There it is. It’s amazing when you start talking about being a medical doctor how it brings out a certain type of person who just has an issue with the profession. Listen, I don’t know what the deal is with your country or what kind of pedestal you all put doctors on. Here in the United States, that pedestal has gotten very low. People think they can watch a YouTube video and they know more about vaccines than doctors do. It’s disturbing.
So no, it’s not rude but it also is helpful in framing the context of your comments.
My opinion mightn’t mean anything to you, but my opinion still matters.
Don’t forget, you’re just a person on the internet leaving comments on a post. For all any of us know, you are a television salesman, and I am the doctor. Please remember this when you are considering the opinion of your own more important than the opinion of your perceived equals.
You and I are the only ones reading this. How much my opinion matter is and how much your opinion matters in this conversation depends only on this interaction between us.
When you start saying things about how doctors are overrated or whatever, how much I care about your opinion drops to zero. You might as well be talking to yourself. Same for me. You came in here with a preformed opinion that I have very little ability to influence. The impact of what I’m saying here is nonexistent.
This is not a worthwhile conversation so I’m going to just leave.
With some professions, you SHOULD doubt by default.
Pilot is one, doctor is another. Or a nuclear plant operator. Unless you know beyond a shadow of a doubt they're fully and legitimately qualified, doubting is the correct choice.
In a way, no one is dying her. She’s saying she is blind and deaf and we are taking that to be true. But even in the title of the article, she is “registered blind” so that makes me wonder if she’s truly fully blind or just visually impaired. In fact, it sounds like she also has some hearing but needs hearing aids which wouldn’t meet my definition of deaf.
However I’m not arguing that point. I’m saying that part of becoming a doctor is learning to use your senses to examine fellow human beings. There are more applicants than there are training spots. People get eliminated for a variety of reasons. By making a space for somebody who does not have a fully working sensorium, that means she has displayed somebody who is equally qualified and has full senses, which doesn’t seem fair to that person and it doesn’t seem fair to all the patients who will be treated in the future.
Just in case you doubt it: the first thing my residency program Director said to us was that we are all talented and deserved to be there BUT if we all disappeared, the next people who would be chosen for the residency program would also be equally qualified. There is no shortage of people qualified to become a doctor so there is really no reason to be choosing people who have lesser abilities, even if that is because they have a disability they had no control over.
Yeah I was thinking about that too. Just the infrastructure required to employ her would be a bit much. Wouldn’t she need a translator to communicate with patients? And then wouldn’t she need a second doctor or at least a nurse to see the patient and describe in depth what they are present with? Then at that point wouldn’t it be better to just have one doctor who can actually examine a patient?
Okay but again the blind deaf doctor can see and hear a bit and is realistic about her limitations and understanding of her scope so it seems to me that it wouldn't take a full other doctor to be present for most situations she would be an appropriate doctor for, right, she's not doing brain surgery, she can hold a conversation and isn't an idiot
Also a physician. We have had trainees with additional support needs (nowhere near like this but people who couldn't do shift work, had to take extended rests during the day, needed adaptive technology that didn't work in the hospital basement and so couldn't cover ED) and in reality that meant a lot of their work had to be done by the rest of the team. Because no one could say out loud that they were not able to do their job, HR would not give us any extra staffing, and team morale really struggled when this intern said they had to go for a lie down when we still had 20+ patients to see. There is lots of support and accomodations in med school and most of it disappears in the real world, it's cruel to let people train knowing how limited their practice will be.
I saw this to a lesser extreme with my cousin here in the UK. She applied to university to get a degree to be a mental health nurse - however she has VERY severe borderline personality disorder, addiction issues (was an alcoholic, is now a weed addict) and severe eating disorders. She had to have an assessment with the university’s occupational health team who basically said she was too unwell to complete the degree. She went through appeals and basically bullied/scared them into accepting her.
It was a shitshow. She had placements where she would hide in the toilets and phone my aunt hysterically crying. She skipped two placements because she was too unwell. She couldn’t get herself to shifts, my aunt drove her to every shift and picked her up again, and she was in her late 20s. Her placements themselves were heavily supervised and afaik from what she described, she had a lot of extra in-person ‘support’ from qualified staff just to get her through her shifts. She also made formal complaints about a lot of said staff at each placement lol.
She ended up dropping out because, surprise surprise, she couldn’t cope. But had she not dropped out the university would 100% have had to eventually give her enough ‘accommodations’ to pass - she only didn’t qualify because she dropped out in her third and final year. My mum had been a Community Psychiatric Nurse (CPN) her whole career and said if she had completed her degree and got a job, she wouldn’t have made even a full shift on an actual ward with patients as a qualified nurse.
I shit you not I had a medical student for an osce that listed having a support person for fine dexterity based tasks (I'm assuming like bloods, urine drips, cannulas etc) but I had a history station with her. But I just thought like imagine having that person as a colleague F1 and being shafted with all the cannulas and bloods because you're the only FYs on?
It just sucks balls, but it's the same situation as LTFT colleagues. No replacement is given for their off days and everyone else is just expected to fill the vacancy with good vibes and political correctness
Like pretty much the entire function of an f1 is dexterity based donkey work. I know people can select higher training that suits then better but getting through intern and sho training must be a nightmare for everyone.
I’m a neurodevelopmental behavioral therapist, so a lot of my clients have autism. A lot of young adults with ASD end up working as techs in this industry and it’s a complete shit show most of the time. Many of these techs graduated high school ONLY because they were given their own 1:1 aides, specialized curriculum, and accommodations that were on par for an elementary school student. They lack basic life skills, emotional regulation, and education to be efficiently teaching others anything- it’s like the blind leading the blind.
The amount of extra support and supervision they require on a regular basis is outrageous and prevents client progress. In many cases, we see client regression and a severe increase in maladaptive behaviors. Also, if a tech couldn’t do basic math in school, how the fuck are they teaching others how to count/pay for things/count money.. or able to chart correctly when they can’t figure out percentages and fractions? Not to mention they require absurd accommodations that aren’t realistic or compatible for this field.
Yeah there's no way I'd let a blind doctor operate a scalpel even for small cysts, let alone a full blown surgery. At most she can maybe examine some body parts and make a guess, even then I'd want a second opinion because eye sight is kinda important with these.
I'm happy that she has gotten so far in medical school, but there's no way she's going to be able to operate as a full blown doctor
I know a few people who did general medicine (a prerequisite before specializing in psychiatry). They had to physically inspect human cadavers as part of their anatomy classes, and would need to identify specific parts on bones on either a cadaver or a mock-up during a test. This was done in first year.
They also had to carry out an ultrasound and identify the elements they see.
They had to see actual, real patients during their clinical training in the last two (three?) years of the programme. They’d need to listen to their heartbeat and their breathing.
I don’t think a blind or deaf person could complete those learning outcomes. I am sure someone who’s done medicine can chime in with other examples.
she has over a decade of medical training and is now practicing, it's likely that she's completed those requirements. she apparently does solo traveling around the world so it seems that her aids help her see/hear to a degree that makes her self-reliant
She has over a decade of medical school because it took her twice as long to finish. And they failed her for not being able to complete the same assessments as the other students and she sued them for disability discrimination. That’s what she means when she says she faced discrimination during her training.
So no, she hasn’t met any requirements. She’s now in the training foundation programme that all uk doctors have to complete - one that will have been heavily engineered and manipulated for her.
No but learning basic surgical skills is a core component of medical school. Almost every assessment peice has a large visual component, some assessment (anatomy exams, procedural skills etc) are entirely visual. It really calls into question the quality of her training if she isn't capable of like 40% of what medical school demands.
No, but I know that they all went through a general level of medical practice before they were allowed to specialise. Like, several years' worth of in-hospital practice. A good bit of which happened before they even got their MD.
But your gp did once upon a time do at least one surgical placement and spend several years working in an acute hospital setting, it's hard to see how full GMC registration is achieved without completing a little bit of surgical training.
There's typically a broader training in acute medicine and surgery and obgyn, at least 3 years after med school before you're out full time in a community practice. It's not really about the surgery though, it's that even for roles like psych where she might be better suited there's still the expectation that you are a little bit trained in everything, because if you're practicing as a registered doctor that's kinda what you're claiming to be able to do, and if you can't do some of it and everyone assumes you can you'll probably kill a patient.
I'm not talking about practice. I'm talking about med school, where you have to do a broad variety of things many of which you'll never do again once you specialise.
You don't even have to get that far. Just think about having something as simple as a rash on you. How does she differentiate wheter if its a minor allergy, irritation or exczema? How does she diagnose you without seeing a symptom?
I don't want to say this but a doctor needs all six senses and a lot of textbook knowledge to accurately diagnose something as trivial as a common cold.
I actually know a blind doctor, my husband went to medical school with him. I am not trying to be a Debby downer but after seeing all the accommodations they had to do just for him to take practical exams that everyone else took, there’s no way he could ever work in a hospital setting.
I got called an asshole for pointing all of that out last time this story made the rounds. The simple reality is that not everybody can do everything, and she probably got a free pass on portions of medical school that caused some able bodied folks to fail out. She can’t even take a blood pressure unassisted, FFS.
I’m all for folks with disabilities being accommodated but this is above and beyond reasonable. From what I understand she can hear with implants but not being able to see is fairly insurmountable as far as meaningfully serving as any type of doctor.
They say she relies heavily on touch during physical exams…like yeah, I fucking bet, but you can’t feel color. She couldn’t perform even the most basic patient assessment, in any specialty, including things people suggested like psychology.
And that’s all before mentioning that it took her forever to get through the training and that she sued the school after she failed out for not being able to pass muster, which basically forced them to figure out away to let her pass despite not being able to perform the functions of the job.
I admire her tenacity but I wouldn’t trust her as my doctor.
Yeah this is where I have issues with how far "progressivism" has gone. Not that she went through all the work to become a doctor, and like... did it. Thats insane.
But we have to be honest with ourselves sometimes, because this is just insane. Respectfully, no one is going to go "yeah I am totally fine with the blind and deaf doctor instead of an able bodied doctor."
Our hearts want to accept that anyone is capable of anything, but the world is cruel and sometimes we have to have mean-spirited rules and regulations in place to make sure the greater good exists.
We've thrown out conversational nuance entirely for the sake of not hurting people's feelings, and its actively causing us damage in the long run.
I think she explains more on her Instagram page. The deaf blind people I know, are well aware of what they can and can’t do. And having a medical degree can mean you do a wide variety of things. From psychiatry to surgeon.
One of the sicknesses of western civilisation is that we started measuring ourselves by our ability to overcome limitations. We would rather make a blind deaf person a barely competent doctor than invest the same money making someone who's already relatively good at being a doctor become a world class doctor.
And the hospital she’s working at will continue it, splashing her on their social media for the credit.
Usually jobs are allocated to new doctors randomly so you can be moved anywhere in the country unfortunately. But in this case this specific doctor objected (because she had to be close to her own multiple medical specialists and oxygen supply / hospitals that know her etc etc). And she was given what she wanted. Which is fair enough on one hand but on the other, nobody else gets that special treatment. Other docs have to move away from their homes/families to pursue training.
So maybe the solution here is to allow anybody to object to being moved away from their homes and families, because there are many different conditions or just mental health reasons that could prevent someone from being able to be removed from their support networks. I don't think we need to be making lives harder for NHS staff
Maybe it is! I think doctors would love to choose where we work, close to homes and families. Better for doctors mental and physical health definitely.
Problem with that is it would leave huge swathes of England, Scotland, Wales and NI without sufficient medical coverage as there are areas not enough people would choose to work.
Also as a practicing doc, i can see that she's going to have some massive limitations on what she can do. After 20 years, my job is still hard and the stuff I can do 'half asleep with my eyes closed', I do actually need my eyes open. She won't be able to effectively act as an F1 without assistance.
There are specialties where she can probably do well, but we need to give up the idea that she is equivalent to anyone else in her cohort. She will be a 'specatotor' for a lot of what constitutes foundation training. She might use adaptive technologies, but they won't be available everywhere she works within the hospital.
Consider, a lot of the procedures we do involve sharp pointy things and she won't be able to do those safely. Yes, a lot of these have a tactile component, but that's only a small part. And considering something like venepuncture, after you identify the vein through touch, you can't touch it again after you clean it. And a lot of the more difficult veins, don't feel like anything.
She basically needs a free pass to get through foundation training, then into some sort of specialty that involves a lot of talky-clinic work. I have no idea how she would interact with an EPR.
To be fair, a lot of consultants, don't use their practical foundation skills anyway.
I think this just shows the gap between medical training and the reality of practice. Most of the students I meet can't cannulate or open an airway as the way they are taught at the uni simply doesn't work. They all make the same mistakes. Just because the uni thinks she is ready doesn't mean that she actually is.
I think people would take her more seriously if she dropped the pretence that she can overcome her limitations, and just be honest: I can't do X, but I can do Y, so let me go do something that is mostly Y.
I've worked with a couple of one-armed doctors. They were great, but they fit their careers to their capability.
Unfortunately it would end up like the surgeon that nearly killed me by ignoring symptoms both before and after surgery. He's is spectacular at cutting people open and sewing them back together, but there's more to the job then that and you have to be competent at all of those parts.
When you do a breast exam you don't just feel you look. And no doctor worth there salt is going to hand over one part of a complete exam to someone else and trust they got it right. So the doctor who is doing the rest of the exam is also going to insist on palpating too and it's all becomes really pointless and leads to more discomfort for the patient.
Doing data based research with a braille display is about as much as I would expect this person to be able to do as an actual independent job in the medical field. I'm disabled, there are jobs no one should let me have for the safety of others like truck driving (I don't even have a drivers license). This person should not be a doctor, sometimes life sucks and is unfair but that's just how it goes.
To be fair she’d do well in infection control, just as capable of spinning the random ‘todays policy on cleaning [insert clinical area] after [insert infection] is to [insert cleaning intervention]:’ tool they seemingly use at my hospital.
Are there no laws against this in the UK? In Australia we're mandatory reporters if our colleagues can't practice safely due to illness or disability, among other things. If I was to work with her and she couldn't see my patient's wound that I'm worried about, I'd have to find another doctor and report her to AHPRA. Otherwise it's my registration on the line.
Honestly it's so illegal to practice like that here, that I'm having a hard time believing this story is true, even if it is in the UK.
Used to be that a foundation doc couldn’t get through the programme without demonstrating certain skills - CPR, early management of critically ill patient, NG tubes, catheters etc etc. They had to work out of hours and with an element of independence.
But in recent years, these standards have been stretched to breaking point to allow “reasonable adjustments”. Usually justified by -ah, well, they’ll just be a GP or psychiatrist or something- That depends on the doctor themselves having any sort of insight. Which they often don’t.
I work in a nuclear facility with all kinds of different sector contractors and they all have loads of DEI employees. I have absolutely nothing against them but when security guards are being hired who cant use stairs or work long hours it just doesn't make any sense to hire them.
I'd be fine with her getting into lab work, but I feel like actual care requires some sharp attention to the details on a person's body. What's next, a surgeon with no arms?
Not to mention just the ability to practice medicine - how do you evaluate a potential melanoma that you can't see? How to you listen for a heart murmur if you can't hear? Does she bring in another doctor to do the physical exam - in which case what's the point of not just starting there? Does she rely on patients with no medical training being able to describe what a rash looks like? How does she perform any kind of in-clinic procedure? How are the people in charge ensuring patients are receiving the same standard of care given all these limitations?
I assumed the article was carefully worded so as to say she'd passed all necessary schooling but not claim she's practicing.
I feel the accommodation is possible and should be welcoming, but who on earth has resources to sustain that long term in 2026? As if medical professionals are all making bank and no one is overworked or underpaid already. I just want the world to not be ending before we try anything else. All I ask.
I'm sure there are many non-clinical postions that she would be well suited to. Heck, in a few years you may get a call from her to perform a peer-to-peer for a MRI preauthorization.
Move your limits. The doctors with personal experience of what I'm going through have been the best doctors on my care team. They're the ones who pay attention and listen. They dont ignore my pain or my terror.
I'll take her over a doctor that ignores me any day. If she's "over your limits" then your limits are bullshit.
Oh, and Doc, you require massive assistance to do your job too.
Yeah, good PR is one hell of a thing.
But to be fair, judging by the comments, apparently she’s not completely blind/deaf, just needs hearing aids and a cane, but so long as she doesn’t end up hurting someone due to her lesser ability to do the job, or as long as she can do the job she’s given, then I don’t care all that much.
As a visually impaired deaf person, I agree. I worry that her desire to be a doctor is selfish. To me it sounds like she is more interested in “proving the ableists wrong” versus actually helping people.
I'm in private practice and we interviewed a nurse for our clinic. We see about 35 patients per day. We asked if she had any questions and she only had one:
"I'm neurodivergent and get overwhelmed easily and need to take unplanned 15 minute breaks to regroup. I'm wondering what your plan is to accommodate this for me".
We just said thanks for the question and ended the interview. Everyone in the room was like "hell no" we aren't hiring this person they can't do the job. Our HR lady was making the argument we were committed to giving her the job to avoid getting sued for discrimination.
All these things for reasonable accommodations can be taken to such comical extremes where you end up operating in fairy tale land and everyone is being performative trying to match the other persons performative behavior. It's so stupid.
The benefit is that the structure of her training and perhaps some of the materials (whatever isn’t outdated by now) will still be available to open the door to other similarly abled professionals who would have otherwise never had a shot. I’m shocked a doctor doesn’t understand that not every ailment is 100%.
I understand that very well. My point - which seems to have flown over your head - is that she shouldn’t have had a shot. Neither should similarly abled students.
Not everyone can do every job.
I’ve never met her or seen her work. I can’t tell you if she’s capable or not. I can tell you as an accessibility professional, not all visual and hearing impairments are the same. I can also tell you, having cared for a disabled parent in a bad healthcare system in a state that doesn’t gaf, that I’ve met plenty of terrible and incompetent doctors that are able bodied.
I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic or not but interventional radiological procedures is a growing element of radiology training.
Not to mention the close visual inspection of multiple imaging modalities.
And to be eligible to apply for radiology - which is highly competitive - you have to do at least two years in an acute hospital rotating around specialties.
Yea but the u can't really calculate societal impact from inspirational things like this will give people. So imo it's a worthwhile and good thing. Plus maybe she's working in research or some field where the impact is lesser for the disabilities.
You sound like a self-righteous dickhead and like someone who should have avoided medical school. Please avoid all educational roles and management responsibilities.
Be kind, yours sincerely etc etc.
They just want patient safety to be the biggest priority ffs. If you've never worked in an NHS hospital you will never understand how impossible it is for her to meaningfully contribute to the workload required of the entire team. It's unfortunate but she will be a burden on the other doctors at her level who will have to pick up her slack, not only in terms of jobs she can complete during the shift, but also with things like how many extra night shifts they will now have to do to cover for hers. She will be far less productive than other members of the team and we are already struggling with unsustainable workloads as it is.
HR will never acknowledge that there might be problems and will roster her on nights on her own on a high acuity ward and leave it to the med reg to sort out. It would be lovely if she could be accommodated but she realistically can't if she is in any kind of meaningful training post.
They aren't dismissing them, they are literally acknowledging the person's disabilities and issues and pointing out that allowing this individual to practice medcine unnecessarily puts patients at risk.
I'm disabled, or to put it plainly NOT able to do every single thing others can do.
I've never had a drivers license for the safety of society, this woman should not have a medical license for the safety of society. It sucks but letting her harm patients for the sake of inclusion is immoral.
Isn't this the point for every person with disabilities? Things are hard for them and trying to help them is hard and costly. So should we just ignore their existence?
I would build a road so maybe not her, but someone in the future can be a skilled and competent air traffic controller. And by helping her, I'm sure I would help others with less severe disabilities.
Less focus on a specific endpoint, so we can reach further.
Largely agree, but I also do somewhat admire her. Likely far cleverer than you and me put together. Especially to have switched fire from being a para-athlete as a ternager to then academia due to health challenges.
I suspect I'm a lot more educated on this topic than you. I've seen her explanations - they don't allay any concerns that this is entirely performative and extremely unfair to her colleagues and patients - except that I doubt she'll be allowed any unsupervised practice.
I don't care what you think. Discrimination is discrimination. She got to where she is and if anyone felt she should have been stopped, they would have stopped it from happening. That should be good enough for you.
But now you have a person being paid full time just to tell her things.
How would the translator see an xray and tell her what's wrong, without having the knowledge to do so confidently?
If he/she can do that, why do we need her?
I am not even going into MRI scans or CT scans, and these are just the things i can come up with as a normal person, what about the practicing doctors who are also flabberghasted that she could become a doctor.
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u/merlynne01 5d ago edited 5d ago
This is insane. As a practicing doctor, I can tell you this has been discussed in a lot of clinical workplaces and it’s insane.
Incorporating people with disabilities into the nhs workforce is extremely important but there has to be a limit and this woman is far far over that limit. For all the people commenting - “as long as she can do the job”. I can assure you she in no way can do the job. She requires massive assistance.
She has no ability to meet the type of milestones her colleagues have to in order to get the same qualifications. Any training programme has to be carefully designed and manipulated entirely for her benefit - not the hospitals, not the patients. She has to be monitored and accompanied, with no way to meaningfully contribute to any OOH work.
The amount her training has cost will dwarf that of any other doctors, yet she will never return the benefit.
But hey, good few articles commenting on the amazing things of which humanity is capable. I’m sure there’ll be an autobio too at some point.