Students with Disabilities

You have been assigned a student who is a paraplegic and in a wheelchair to your clinical group. You wonder about her physical competency to perform required psychomotor tasks. Three students in your busy classroom need special testing accommodations due to diagnosed learning disabilities. Nurses Announcements Archive Article

Students with Disabilities

Students requesting accommodations from a college or university must have a disability as defined by section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). A disability can be a physical, psychological, and/or a learning impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities.

Documentation of the disability should be from a qualified professional. Complete documentation includes a diagnosis of the specific disability, justification of the need for special accommodations, and the functional limitations the disability presents to the student's learning environment.

It is the responsibility of students with disabilities to seek available assistance at the college or university and to make their needs known. In other words, the individual with the disability must initiate the procedure. Each college or university receiving federal funds has a disability support service office with a specific process for students to follow. The students must obtain the evaluation at their own expense, and this can be costly. It is not the same as in high school where the state pays for the evaluation and teachers initiate the process.

An individual with a disability is not automatically entitled to any specific accommodation. According to the ADA, students who demonstrate learning, emotional, or physical disability are allowed "reasonable accommodations." Reasonable accommodations do not include accommodations that would fundamentally alter the essential performance standards in a program of study or present the institution with an "undue burden." A student with disabilities is subject to the same codes of conduct and disciplinary processes as other students.

Reasonable accommodations can consist of alternative testing locations and formats, the use of readers, computers, or scribes, priority seating in the classroom, and increased time for testing. These accommodations are determined on an individual basis. The most common accommodations in nursing school involve extra time for examinations (usually time-and-a-half) and exam administration in a separate classroom (with minimal distractions).

Once a student has been officially granted special accommodations, it is then his or her responsibility to contact the faculty to communicate the approved accommodations and how they can be implemented. Accommodations are not retroactively applied and cannot "undo" prior to failing grades. Students need to give their instructors enough time to contact the disability office on campus to make the alternate arrangements. In most instances, at least two or three weeks' prior notice is required.

It is the faculty's responsibility to diligently protect students' confidentiality at all times, according to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act ("FERPA"). The students' special accommodations or disability should never be discussed with other students and should only be mentioned to other instructors on a "need to know" basis.

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VickyRN

About VickyRN, MSN, DNP, RN

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Specializes in Management, Emergency, Psych, Med Surg.

I have been reading about the ADA lately in regard to service animals. You bring up an interesting point. I believe there is some stipulation that addresses if the person who falls under the ADA, when they can't perform the requirements of the job. Can a nurse in a wheelchair meet the demands of patient care?

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Specializes in Gerontological, cardiac, med-surg, peds.
diane227 said:
I have been reading about the ADA lately in regard to service animals. You bring up an interesting point. I believe there is some stipulation that addresses if the person who falls under the ADA, when they can't perform the requirements of the job. Can a nurse in a wheelchair meet the demands of patient care?

Interesting question. I actually had a student in a wheelchair in one of my clinical groups (this was not just a hypothetical situation). She performed amazingly well in the clinical setting and was able to do everything that was required according to course objectives and beyond! She was an inspiration to all (especially to patients facing situational crises in their lives) and to the staff. In one clinical setting, the staff actually stood up and applauded her after she gave her testimony.

There are many situations in which a nurse in a wheelchair can perform adequately - psychiatric nursing and certain community health positions, to name a few. I'm sure there are many others.

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Specializes in Hospice, LTC, CBRF, and Home Health.

I'm glad this discussion came out. I had to leave clinicals after my SCI because the educators felt I couldn't continue with the course work.

This was some 6 years ago and I have always wondered if there have been others who had successfully completed clinicals being a paraplegic.

I am a T10 and have good upper body strength and there isn't very much I can't do as it is right now.

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Specializes in Chemo.

I can tell you this, despite the many degrees that instructors may have, many teacher are ignorant when it comes to dyslexia this includes employers and people. It has been my experience the teachers can be some of worst offenders of discrimination when it comes to students with learning difficulties. I have learned to really hate the word disability.

I am a new graduate; the last people I thought I would have problems with were educators and nursing instructors. I had teachers in nursing school who made it as difficult as possible for me and other students because we had special testing areas. The tests were the same as everyone else’s, but we got extra time on our test and in a quiet environment. The attitude was that we were getting something extra “an unfair advantage” that made me so mad.

My point is do not set the mark in life for your students; let them set what they can achieve in life for themselves. Please look at the two links, one is a web sight for college students with dyslexia plus other teaching resources and is a you tube link that might open your eyes a little. John

Ps I passed with a b average and a for the last.

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I'm a nurse in an electric wheelchair. I work the night shift in a nursing home on the rehab unit, but I've also worked days many times due to call-ins. I'm pretty popular with the staff and patients, and get top evaluations, so I must conclude that I'm pulling my weight :)

I might not have gone into nursing if I had known I was going to be disabled, but there are a great many jobs that disabled nurses can do. In fact, my health problems have given me great insight into my patients' woes. I venture to say that I'd be a lesser nurse if I had not gotten sick.

Just because you are disabled doesn't mean you can't fulfill your job requirements--you just have to pick the right job. I can pass meds with the best of them. I can chart, assign duties to CNAs, assess my patients, do treatments, etc etc. The only job that I don't do is ambulate patients, which is not a critical part of the nurses's tasks anyway.

Another thing I'd like to point out is that because a nurse is in a wheelchair doesn't mean that she can't stand or walk. I can do both--just not for long. I don't have any trouble repositioning or transferring patients. This is an assumption that I find people commonly make about me--that I can't stand at all. I hope that helps :)

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not meaning to be rude....but can you do cpr ??????

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That's not rude at all :) Ask anything you like!

I don't have any trouble doing CPR because I can lean on the bedside to do chest compressions. In 5 years I've never had to do CPR at work, though. I have a good team of CNAs and we run drills and practice what to do.

I guess the point is something like this: One of the nurses I work with is a smoking alcoholic. She can barely make it down the hall herself. Another nurse weighs over 350 pounds. Another nurse is recovering from cancer treatments. Yet they are considered "normal" and I'm "disabled", and considered more of a handicap by people who don't know us, and they don't think anything about working with those gals. I work rings around them (Not picking on them, we all have our crosses, just using them as an example).

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Specializes in geriatric & childrens psych, rehab, woun.

There are many types of nurses and nursing, and this student probably has more upper body strength than your average student, beds today lower down very low and as long as she can reach around to properly care for a client I do not see a problem. Many of us able bodied nurses need a spare pair of hands to shift a person or for cpr. I have only done cpr on 1 person by myself and that was my husband, in my home while my son called 911.

I know many nurses who have never touched a client with a wash rag, or lifted a resident. If it did not come up in their clinical they never did a particular task on a live person. Just a model and to be perfectly honest I couldn't do a iv to save my life.

I see no reason that a handicapped nurse could not do what I do in geriatrics. There are so many other areas as well, labor and delivery nicu, insurance reviews,crc reviews, mds reviews or psych nursing, school nursing, or instructing. The best social worker I ever knew was a paraplegic.

I believe my nephew who is a 29 year old quadriplegic would be more receptive to a nurse who is a paraplegic that from his "Witchy' old aunt. Or any other able bodied person. Our concept of nursing changes daily and this student wants to be a nurse for a reason and has much to offer. Teach her as you would any other student but leave room for the education she'll teach her fellow students by her example. I have worked with many nurses over the years and learned much, like taking a blood pressure without a stethoscope from a deaf friend, when I was a student I fractured my left wrist and thumb I can do everything with my right hand as well, I learned or I would have been kicked out of the nursing school 3 weeks before graduation. So give her a chance to showcase her skill.

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Cobweb said:
I guess the point is something like this: One of the nurses I work with is a smoking alcoholic. She can barely make it down the hall herself. Another nurse weighs over 350 pounds. Another nurse is recovering from cancer treatments. Yet they are considered "normal" and I'm "disabled", and considered more of a handicap by people who don't know us, and they don't think anything about working with those gals. I work rings around them (Not picking on them, we all have our crosses, just using them as an example).

"Normal" is my least favorite word in the English language. Yes, I know nurses have to know what is "normal" for many aspects of patient care. But the word can really be hurtful, because it makes people constantly compare themselves to others or some vague ideal, rather than look at what their competencies are and how they can be empowered to shape their own future. (I work with people with severe chronic pain, many of whom constantly beat themselves up for "not being normal".)

Off the soapbox now. Thanks much, Cobweb. I'm so glad you posted.

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Specializes in alzeheimers, skilled, assis. living.

Isn't NORMAL just a setting on your clothes dryer???

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Isn't NORMAL just a setting on your clothes dryer???

:chuckle

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