Ask any premedical student and they will tell you that the path to medical school is difficult, which is why we are encouraged to find mentors early. We seek out physicians who can show us what medicine is really like through shadowing and principal investigators who help us grow our skills of scientific inquiry. We even ask our peers and medical students for mentorship, asking questions such as what materials they used to study for the MCAT or which science electives to enroll in.
However, for a disabled premedical student, it can be even harder to find a mentor with the lived experience of navigating medicine with a disability. There are questions that are difficult to answer through traditional premedical advising, as these aren’t the typical pre-med questions about medical school lists, financial aid, and application timelines. They are questions about what it means to enter medicine with a disability.
What is it actually like to be a medical student with a disability? When should a student disclose their need for accommodations: on the application, interview, after acceptance? How does a student determine whether a medical school truly supports disabled students rather than simply meeting minimum requirements? What challenges have other disabled students faced as a result of their disability, and how did they navigate them?
The purpose of accommodations is to give qualified students with disabilities equitable access to education and the opportunity to demonstrate their abilities. Obtaining accommodations can be difficult and often requires extensive documentation, testing, and knowledge of a process that may not be equally or easily accessible to every student. Those hurdles are part of why I serve as vice chair of Students with Disabilities at my university, where I advocate for students navigating disability and access.
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However, accommodations and mentorship serve fundamentally different purposes. An accommodations office sets up policies and procedures specific to the student’s needs. Mentorship can help a disabled student understand how those policies actually function in real life and help them imagine themselves succeeding within a system that was not always designed with them in mind. A mentor who has navigated accommodations while living with a disability can answer questions that a policy manual cannot and provide evidence that there is a successful path forward. Accommodations follow an established institutional process, whereas finding disability-specific mentorship is often left to the student.
The inclusion of disabled premedical students in the ecosystem of health care is beneficial for many reasons. Disabled patients can benefit from seeing representation in medicine, which can foster connection and trust through shared lived experience. Medical education can also do more to teach future physicians how to care for and connect with disabled patients. We need empathy and education, not exclusion. For the disabled pre-med student, meeting someone further along the path can transform a goal that once felt impossible into something attainable.
Premedical success is built around demonstrating professional, academic, and personal growth. Disability accommodations help ensure that disabled students have equitable access to testing and evaluation. But that is only half of the equation; disability mentorship provides guidance in navigating the gaps in the system that was not always designed to be flexible or accessible for the disabled community. Accommodations can provide access to an education. They cannot replace personal relationship and guidance from a mentor who has experienced similar hurdles and continued forward. Disabled premedical students deserve both.
Madeline Pinches is a premedical student.
