Doctors with disabilities: Licensed to practise?

Abstract

Doctors deal with patient's disabilities every day but many in the profession have been nonplussed to see the focus of the disability rights lobbies shift from the recipients of care to the carers themselves. Until recently the number of practising doctors known to have significant disabilities was very low and for many reasons potential medical students were deterred from entering medical education. This piece would not even have been commissioned 14 years ago when the UK Disability Discrimination Act 1995 was passed. It is a measure of the change in society's view of disability, reinforced by law, that the issue of whether there are disabilities which, in themselves, render a doctor unfit to practise can be analysed and discussed. © Royal College of Physicians, 2009. All rights reserved.