Deaf student attending medical school

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Pretty inspirational stuff. 👍
Have a disability myself, but I know there have been many physicians with mobility issues.
 
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I wonder how reliant he is on lip reading, and if how well he's able to discern voices if there are other noises. I wish him luck, because I imagine rotations will not be easy, especially if they're in a busy hospital, and he's having to observe a procedure and try to discern his attending's voice out of the cacophony around him.
 
nuance said:
Good for him!

This is definitely a step in the right direction, but I wonder how the deaf community feels about it. I know that many people who consider themselves part of the "deaf community" are very anti-cochlear implant. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochlear_implant#Controversy_in_Deaf_culture ) I am curious to know whether they view this student's success as positive or negative (Or perhaps both?) for deaf culture.
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It depends. Many deaf parents want the best for their kids; if it means giving them all the opportunities the other kids have they may allow it to happen. There are some pretty good documentaries on this issue, ex: Sound and Fury. I think being deaf may violate the technical standards -

[Passage from __ MD School technical standard policy]

Communication:
Candidate/student must be able to hear, observe and speak to patients
in order to elicit and acquire information, examine them, describe changes in mood,
activity, and posture, and perceive their nonverbal communication. Students must also be
able to communicate effectively in oral and written form with staff and faculty members,
the patient, and all members of the health care team.
 
Isoprop said:
Google Dr. Tim Cordes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Cordes
Click to expand...

"Cordes created a program called TimMol to represent atoms in protein structures musically instead of graphically as is more common for biochemistry software. Different elements are represented by different musical instruments, and spatial coordinates x, y, and z are represented by varying the notes' left-right position, loudness, and pitch respectively." :wow: :wow: :wow:

Wow. I am really curious about what this program actually sounds like. I tried searching for some sample sounds on youtube/google but couldn't find any.
 
Bl4ckout said:
It depends. Many deaf parents want the best for their kids; if it means giving them all the opportunities the other kids have they may allow it to happen. There are some pretty good documentaries on this issue, ex: Sound and Fury. I think being deaf may violate the technical standards -

[Passage from __ MD School technical standard policy]

Communication:
Candidate/student must be able to hear, observe and speak to patients
in order to elicit and acquire information, examine them, describe changes in mood,
activity, and posture, and perceive their nonverbal communication. Students must also be
able to communicate effectively in oral and written form with staff and faculty members,
the patient, and all members of the health care team.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I figured it just depends. I am interested in disability rights etc. so I have always wondered about which disabilities would violate the technical standards / whether accommodations like cochlear implants would be sufficient in allowing effective communication (i.e. "effective" according to the standards).

I haven't seen Sound and Fury, but I will try to get a hold of it soon.
 
Starlightembers said:
Einstein once graduated a quadriplegic. He went on to complete a residency in Internal Medicine and a fellowship in Nephrology.

IIRC, UCLA also accepted a triple amputee. Edit: Yep, they most certainly did.
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I'm all for disability rights, but this profession is about patients. If a disabled doctor can perform as well as their non disabled counterparts then there is absolutely no reason to discriminate, however there should be no compromises made in the treatment of patients in the name of being inclusive. I'm not saying these people aren't capable in many regards, but I'm having a hard time imagining how a quadriplegic would effectively perform something as simple as a physical exam, or do anything procedural for the matter. The competency requirements are there for a reason, and while it is unfortunate that they aren't wholly inclusive, that hardly takes away from their importance.
 
mishaS said:
I'm all for disability rights, but this profession is about patients. If a disabled doctor can perform as well as their non disabled counterparts then there is absolutely no reason to discriminate, however there should be no compromises made in the treatment of patients in the name of being inclusive. I'm not saying these people aren't capable in many regards, but I'm having a hard time imagining how a quadriplegic would effectively perform something as simple as a physical exam, or do anything procedural for the matter. The competency requirements are there for a reason, and while it is unfortunate that they aren't wholly inclusive, that hardly takes away from their importance.
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exactly the reason for the technical standards. If the patient codes, the last thing they want to someone who is physically unable to perform cpr etc.
 
More astounding is a deaf composing Beethoven's Ninth. May be we can do away with stethoscope after all (JK). It's always motivational when people with disabilities, such as Thelma Moss wining olympics, accomplish great things.👍
 
Bl4ckout said:
exactly the reason for the technical standards. If the patient codes, the last thing they want to someone who is physically unable to perform cpr etc.
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Nurses can perform CPR. In fact, it's often the nurses that do the CPR while the physician runs the code.

The quadriplegic, Jim Post, was required to pay for a physician's assistant in order to attend Einstein.
 
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chronicidal said:
Nurses can perform CPR. In fact, it's often the nurses that do the CPR while the physician runs the code.

The quadriplegic, Jim Post, was required to pay for a physician's assistant in order to attend Einstein.
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Obviously from the cognitive aspect, Dr. Post, and others like him, are fine, and for certain specialties they'd perform just as well as anyone else, however in nephrology, his field, for example, there are important diagnostic procedures which he will be unable to perform because of his disability.

Certain procedures are generally accepted as being integral to nephrology practice; relinquishing them would potentially affect the timeliness, quality, and safety of patient care. Such procedures are appropriately mandated by the American College of Graduate Medical Education (ACGME): Renal biopsy and temporary hemodialysis access. The latter is obvious: Nephrologists should have the ability to place emergent access. With regard to renal biopsies, only nephrologists can make real-time decisions about adequacy of sample size given the suspected diagnosis. Nephrologist-obtained renal biopsies yield similar numbers of glomeruli but fewer severe complications, as compared with radiologists (4). Scheduling conflicts may preclude timely biopsy performance by radiologists, particularly in emergent cases.
Click to expand...

I suppose a PA could do these things, however it seems to me that this is an improper workaround, because clearly the ability to do these things, among others, is of an importance high enough that the ACGME has made them a requirement in this field. Being able to rely on a PA to do the physical aspects of work seems to defeat an integral aspect of being an effective practitioner of medicine.
 
Sad that people in this day and age still discriminate against the Deaf.
 
mishaS said:
I'm all for disability rights, but this profession is about patients. If a disabled doctor can perform as well as their non disabled counterparts then there is absolutely no reason to discriminate,
Click to expand...

All forms of discrimination are wrong.
 
jasin said:
How do the ear buds on the stethoscope connect in with CI?
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Oh yeah, that's a really good point. I'm really not sure, but on this website http://www.healthyhearing.com/content/articles/Accessories/Equipment/46018-Stethoscope-hearing-aids if you scroll down to the part about CI's, the picture looks like the stethoscope has some kind of ear buds, but it still doesn't look like a common stethoscope like the one in the original picture. Maybe the part behind his neck has some sort of patch cord or visual output device? I hope they didn't put a common stethoscope around his neck to make him look more "normal" or something. =/
 
nuance said:
Oh yeah, that's a really good point. I'm really not sure, but on this website http://www.healthyhearing.com/content/articles/Accessories/Equipment/46018-Stethoscope-hearing-aids if you scroll down to the part about CI's, the picture looks like the stethoscope has some kind of ear buds, but it still doesn't look like a common stethoscope like the one in the original picture. Maybe the part behind his neck has some sort of patch cord or visual output device? I hope they didn't put a common stethoscope around his neck to make him look more "normal" or something. =/
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hmm
 
jasin said:
All forms of discrimination are wrong.
Click to expand...

Oh please, a doctor looks out for the interests of their patient, not PC garbage like this. Cochlear implant =/= normal hearing.

A large body of clinical research over the last decade demonstrates that
cochlear implants work and provide significant speech and language benefits to
profoundly deaf adults and prelingually deaf children. The most challenging research
problem today is that cochlear implants do not work equally well for everyone who has
a profound hearing loss and cochlear implants frequently do not provide much benefit
at all under highly degraded listening conditions. Some individuals do extremely well
on traditional audiologic outcome measures with their cochlear implants when tested
under benign listening conditions in the clinic and research laboratory while others
have much more difficulty. However, all patients with cochlear implants uniformly
have difficulty in a number of challenging perceptual domains such as: listening in
noise, talking on the telephone, localizing sounds, recognizing familiar voices and
different dialects, identifying environmental sounds and listening to music. The
enormous variability in outcome and benefit following implantation is not surprising
because none of the current generation of cochlear implants successfully restores
normal hearing or supports robust speech perception and spoken language processing
across all of these difficult and highly variable listening conditions. The traditional
outcome measures of audiologic benefit were never designed to assess, understand or
explain individual differences in speech perception and spoken language processing.
Click to expand...

http://www.iu.edu/~srlweb/pr/28/3-Pisoni-Conway-Kronenberger-Horn-Karpicke-Henning.pdf
 
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mishaS said:
Oh please, a doctor looks out for the interests of their patient, not PC garbage like this. Cochlear implant =/= normal hearing.
Click to expand...

Exactly. I expect that there is in fact some sort of trade off on patient care due to his disability.
 
If anyone watches heroes, there is a character in the 4th season who graduated from medical school, but she can't get into a residency. Also, she can see sound waves and beckon people with her music....
 
chronicidal said:
Nurses can perform CPR. In fact, it's often the nurses that do the CPR while the physician runs the code....
Click to expand...

you need everyone to be able to perform CPR. Early chest compressions are the only part of the code ever shown to matter much. Sometimes it's just you in the room when the patient starts coding, and the nurses are going to be the ones who need to get the epi, crash cart, defibrillator etc because you won't always have a clue where they stash those things. The notion that you can stand around and "run the code" isn't accurate.

As for a deaf person in med school, that's very inspirational, but meaningless unless he can find a residency to take the same gamble. A few years back a blind guy completed med school, but I don't recall him getting much further in the journey. Ended up being more a publicity stunt for the school.
 
Law2Doc said:
As for a deaf person in med school, that's very inspirational, but meaningless unless he can find a residency to take the same gamble. A few years back a blind guy completed med school, but I don't recall him getting much further in the journey. Ended up being more a publicity stunt for the school.
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There are lots of Deaf doctors who are attendings.
 
You all keep talking about how its not possible for a deaf person to be a doctor not the fact that it is possible. I know it is unsettling to you all to know that Deaf people can be doctors but you are all just going to have to get over it because times are changing. There are Deaf medical students, deaf residents, and even Deaf attendings and nothing you say about how Deaf can't be doctors will change that.
 
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jasin said:
You all keep talking about how its not possible for a deaf person to be a doctor not the fact that it is possible. I know it is unsettling to you all to know that Deaf people can be doctors but you are all just going to have to get over it because times are changing. There are Deaf medical students, deaf residents, and even Deaf attendings and nothing you say about how Deaf can't be doctors will change that.
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I have a deaf veterinarian with a CI and he's definitely the best I've ever had. Not really living in terror of the deaf menace. 😕

Also why is Jasin copy-pasting this into every thread, even the ones having nothing to do with deafness?
 
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dmf2682 said:
He brings up a valid point. Deaf people are held to the same academic standards as the hearing.
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Only thing he's really proven in this point he supposedly made is that he does not understand what discrimination is.
 
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Can I vote for threads like these to be closed and maybe for someone specific (not calling out the name, but you know who) to have probation or something? All this gets nowhere, but repeated spam about stuff that is never going to get anywhere. The main conspirator in this thread repeats the same statements over and over, doesn't listen to anyone else's argument, and is having problems understanding the reality of the situation.
 
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Neurocentric said:
Can I vote for threads like these to be closed and maybe for someone specific (not calling out the name, but you know who) to have probation or something? All this gets nowhere, but repeated spam about stuff that is never going to get anywhere. The main conspirator in this thread repeats the same statements over and over, doesn't listen to anyone else's argument, and is having problems understanding the reality of the situation.
Click to expand...

But then I'm sure he'd say...

images
 
Oo Cipher oO said:
But then I'm sure he'd say...

images
Click to expand...

Probably, but honestly, maybe he just needs to be shut up. Permanently. I've gotten into arguments with him, and it's just like beating a dead horse. You get nowhere, and personally, I think he starts this drama just because he can.
 
Neurocentric said:
Oh, what a giveaway. D'ja hear that? D'ja hear that, eh? D'ja hear him repressin' me? You saw it, didn't you?

.. I've seen that movie way too much.
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Listen, strange women, laying in ponds, distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.

Supreme executive power derives from a mandate of the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony!
 
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