As someone with pretty severe ADHD, I want to clear up a misconception. It is not that people with ADD/ADHD do not pay attention so much as they can't filter out anything. In other words, we pay attention to just about EVERYTHING. We hyper-focus. So when something is very interesting, challenging, or pumps up the adrenaline, we are able to focus intensely. Thus a life or death clinical situation would likely cause someone with ADHD to perform superbly, with maximum focus. It is the tedious, boring, routine things that we tend to have more problems with because they are not holding onto our attention any more or less than any number of other boring tedious things.
What I have problems with is the easier things. So I make it a practice to ALWAYS ask someone else to double check my medication calculations, etc. before giving an injection (but I think everyone should do that, anyway, if it is a potentially dangerous injection). So to use your example, if I know that routine checks of anesthesia equipment might escape my focus, I solve that by training myself to always go through a checklist or else to ask someone to double check me. In other words, I try to set up a systematic approach to prevent mistakes. Everyone does this, I just might have to be a bit more consciously aware of the need. I will still find a way to insure the patient safety.
I have trouble maintaining interest in subjects that bore me. But give me something difficult or interesting, and I will focus in on it like mad. I love to work through mechanisms, but hate to do rote memorization.
If you know someone with ADD, you might have noticed that they tend to over-research something they are interested in. That's hyper-focus.
As for the accomodations, I think it would have been nice to be able to take my anatomy lab practicals without a strict time limit of something like 30 seconds per station, and my performance on something like that does falter. But I did not want to ask for accomodations. That is not to say it would be wrong to have done so, any more than it would be wrong for someone with 20/200 vision to ask to wear eye-glasses. But I do think that proper management of ADD includes making behavioral changes and including scheduling prompts, etc. +/- medication, depending on the severity.
I schedule study time and stick to it, and I find it helps IMMENSELY to stay at school until I am finished studying for the day. If I come home, you better believe I find a million and one things to take me off course. By creating a routine and sticking to it (i.e. a behavioral change), I am able to maintain my focus on the more boring activities. My grades were excellent last semester, so I think it is working.
The rest of the world is not necessarily going to care that executive function tasks are harder for us. So it is incumbent upon the person with ADD to figure out ways to focus when necessary. Most of the time, that can be achieved without accomodations. But if I felt I needed 1 minute instead of 30 seconds, I would feel no shame in asking for that. I just prefer to figure out how to do it in 30 seconds.
I guess it's more like wanting to run a marathon, but being out of shape. It's not that I cannot ever be capable of running a marathon, but I may need to train myself to run a mile first, then 5 miles, then ten, etc. so as not to hurt myself. Some runners are fitter than others and will get to that marathon distance without having to train as hard as others. That does NOT mean the ones who are not as naturally athletic cannot someday run a marathon, it just might take them a bit more training and consistency to get there. And when they do, they might be even faster than you.
There is NOT a one-size-fits-all solution. Being able to ID some obscure muscle is miles apart from being able to take a history and put together the pieces of a challenging diagnostic puzzle. THAT holds my focus, so I do not think I will be hampered by my ADHD come clinics. Needing and asking for a quiet room to take the GRE has absolutely NO relation to how well one can perform in vet school. If it is what you need to perform to your ability, then that is no different than letting the person with bad vision wear glasses. I don't hear anyone making the argument that we should force myopic people to perform with their natural vision because they might someday need to do surgery and not be able to find their glasses.
