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.

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.