Health Access for Independent Living (HAIL) Fact Sheet: Working with Your Health Care Provider

Attitudinal Barriers.

Health care providers may view physical disability as an illness or an abnormality that needs to be “fixed” rather than a natural condition of a person’s life. They may fail to recognize that people with disabilities can be healthy. In addition, when a person with a disability does get sick, some health care providers attribute all of the patient’s symptoms to his or her disability and do not explore new health complaints as thoroughly as they should.

Visits are more effective when health care providers understand that people with disabilities lead full lives with varied interests, are capable of making their own life decisions, and that their disability is not their main preoccupation. Even when a chronic illness is part of a person’s disability, viewing a person as “sick” implies that the person is helpless. This attitude from a health care provider can make a person with a disability feel powerless.