Submission to the Australian Medical Council about the Standards for Assessment and Accreditation of Specialist Medical Programs

In Australia people with intellectual disability are passing away 27 years earlier than the general population and have four times the rate of potentially avoidable hospitalisations. People with intellectual disability also experience many barriers to receiving safe and quality health care at the doctor. Improving the experience people with intellectual disability have when they visit their doctor can improve health outcomes and change lives.

The Australian Medical Council works with all the places that educate and train medical students in Australia. We say AMC for short. Medical students are people who are learning how to be doctors. The AMC have reviewed the standards for assessment and accreditation for specialist medical programs. We say the standards for short. The standards are the rules and guidelines that medical colleges and universities in Australia have to follow. The standards say what medical students need to learn and be tested on to improve health outcomes for all Australians. We think that with some changes the standards can help shape better health outcomes for people with intellectual disability. 

We have told AMC what we think.  Read our full submission here. Not in plain English.

Our recommendations

In our letter, we recommend writing about the Intellectual Disability Health Capability Framework in the standards or guidance notes to encourage good practice and to promote better health outcomes for people with intellectual disability. The Intellectual Disability Health Capability Framework is a clear plan that guides accreditation authorities, like AMC, to improve education and training for health students.

In our letter we talk about 6 areas where AMC could write about the Intellectual Disability Health Capability Framework in the standards.

1. Cultural competence and intersectionality of care. Include that medical students can work in a way that recognises a people present to health care settings with lived experience of intellectual disability, which can overlap with other varied experiences like cultural background. This can create personal strengths and struggles unique to the person.
    
2. Partnerships and including health consumers. Integrate ideas of co-design and co-delivery of education with people with intellectual disability and their support networks, as well as interdisciplinary care and interaction with disability organisations.
    
3. Communication. To ensure good communication with people with intellectual disability medical students should be practiced in recognising behaviour as a form of communication, and adapting to the person's preferred method of communication whether verbal, non-verbal and / or written.
    
4. Reasonable adjustments. It is important that reasonable adjustments are made for people with intellectual disability to prevent discrimination, for example adapting processes to meet the needs of the person.
    
5. Discrimination, safety and trauma informed care. To reduce the discrimination towards people with intellectual disability that currently causes trauma in health care spaces, medical students can support people to receive health care in a way that is safe and trauma informed.
    
6. Support for medical students who have a lived experience of intellectual disability. It is a human right to participate entirely in society, including access to education and training.

We have asked the AMC to make these changes to the standards to give medical students the opportunity to be prepared to provide safe health care and to improve health outcomes for people with intellectual disability when they become the future specialist doctors of Australia.