The Future of Education

This study examines attitudes of undergraduate healthcare students in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) toward People of Determination (PwD) and situates disability inclusion within global debates on health-professions education. Grounded in symbolic interactionism, attitudes are conceptualised as socially constructed through repeated clinical and interpersonal encounters, positioning undergraduate training as a key site where meanings of disability, professionalism and inclusion are negotiated. A quantitative cross-sectional survey conducted with undergraduate students in medicine, nursing, physiotherapy and speech-language therapy programmes at accredited universities in the UAE. Stratified sampling will ensure representation across disciplines, gender and levels of clinical exposure. Participants will complete the Interaction with Disabled Persons Scale (IDPS) (Gething & Wheeler, 1992), a 20-item Likert-type measure of emotional responses and attitudes toward PwD. Descriptive statistics, group comparisons and multiple regression models will be used to identify patterns and predictors of attitudes, while exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses will assess the reliability and factor structure of the IDPS in the UAE context. We anticipate variability in attitudes by discipline, gender and depth of contact with PwD, with more extensive and meaningful exposure associated with lower discomfort and more positive orientations toward disability. Findings are expected to generate context-specific evidence on disability-related competence among future healthcare professionals, inform the design of inclusive curricula (e.g. structured contact, disability-awareness modules, reflective activities and interprofessional learning), and contribute to the cross-cultural validation of disability-attitude instruments. By providing data from a rapidly developing health system that explicitly promotes disability inclusion through the national “People of Determination” framework, the study offers a useful point of comparison for European and other international programmes seeking culturally responsive approaches to disability education and to the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

Keywords: disability inclusion; People of Determination; health-professions education; medical and health sciences students; attitudes; United Arab Emirates.

References: Bania, T. A., Gianniki, M., Charitaki, G., Giannakoudi, S., Velaoras, A. I., Farantou, C., & Billis, E. (2023). Attitudes towards people with disabilities across different healthcare undergraduate students: A cluster analysis approach. Physiotherapy Research International, 28, e2032.

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Gething, L., & Wheeler, B. (1992). The Interaction with Disabled Persons Scale: A new Australian instrument to measure attitudes towards people with disabilities. Australian Journal of Psychology, 44, 75–82.