According to the Centers for Disease Control, one out of every four American adults lives with a disability (approximately 61 million), and since there are four million nurses in the U.S., a large percentage of nurses are also likely living with disabilities.
Beyond our borders, the World Health Organization estimates that 16 percent of the global population is disabled, perhaps as many as 1.3 billion people.
In the face of an ongoing nursing shortage that sees no signs of abating soon, ableism and discrimination against nurses with disabilities should, by necessity, give way to broader acceptance of nurses’ differing abilities. If we can visualize how even disabled nurses can be accommodated, their contributions can then be more widely recognized and accepted as part of the mainstream of the nursing profession and the delivery of healthcare.
Role Models: Disabled Professionals
Andrea Dalzell — popularly known as “The Seated Nurse” — is a Brooklyn-born RN who has been in a wheelchair since age 12 after being diagnosed with transverse myelitis at age five. As the first wheelchair-bound RN hired in the history of New York State, it took Dalzell 76 job interviews before she landed her first position following graduation from nursing school. As a disabilities advocate and activist, Dalzell represents not only disabled nurses and other healthcare professionals but also everyday citizens seeking avenues to living meaningful, dignified lives that go far beyond any self-definition centered on disability.
Kelly Tuttle, FNP-BC, MSN, was a nurse practitioner in 2015 when a violent car accident resulted in a severe traumatic brain injury (TBI). The author of After the Crash: How to Keep Your Job, Stay in School, and Live Life After a Brain Injury speaks out publicly regarding how to create a life that accommodates the inevitable changes caused by the effects of a TBI.
While not a nurse, Julie Hamilton, the author of Chronic Illness at Work: How Managers Can Support Employees With Chronic Illness, openly discusses how her work and life changed when she was diagnosed with fibromyalgia. Julie helps workplaces understand the plight of employees with chronic illness and how to make accommodations so that their professional contributions remain vital to the workforce.
While Ms. Hamilton, Ms. Tuttle, and Ms. Dalzell are all public figures who have leveraged their disabilities for the good of the wider world, there are countless other nurses and healthcare professionals who live with autoimmune disorders, chronic pain, mental health conditions, cancer, and all manner of conditions that directly or indirectly impact their personal and professional lives. These individuals’ private struggles are a testament to the fortitude and courage of human beings who push against physical and mental challenges, even in the face of discrimination and bias in the community and the workplace.
Nurses With Disabilities are Everywhere
In a 2022 article in the Online Journal of Issues in Nursing (OJIN) entitled Nurses With Disabilities: Transforming Healthcare For All, authors Beth Marks, PhD, RN, FAAN, and Jasmina Sisirak, PhD, MPH make their findings and opinions clear by stating:
“Nurses with disability bring a unique and innovative set of nursing skills that can transform and improve healthcare and health outcomes, increase universal design for equitable access, and foster accessible and acceptable learning for everyone. Our disability and our nursing care matters.”
Marks and Sisirak add:
“Nurses with a disability can offer patient-provider concordance, supporting a shared experience, valuing disability, and modeling positive expectations.”
Meanwhile, the National Organization of Nurses With Disabilities (NOND) serves as “an open membership, cross-disability, professional organization that works to promote equity for people with disabilities and chronic health conditions in nursing through education and advocacy by promoting best practices in education and employment; providing resources to individuals, nursing and disability organizations, and educational and healthcare institutions; influencing the provision of culturally responsive nursing practice; and creating systemic improvements.”
As vital members of the most trusted profession in the United States (and likely worldwide), disabled nurses are role models, warriors for equality, and advocates who have much to give to a society and a healthcare system willing to accept them at face value.
We can all help nurses with disabilities by advocating for those who fall outside the generally accepted definition of “normal.” We owe it to ourselves, society, and those who are differently abled so that every individual’s contribution can be recognized and seen for what it is: a contribution worthy of being honored for its uniqueness, strength, and value.
Daily Nurse is thrilled to feature Keith Carlson, “Nurse Keith,” a well-known nurse career coach and podcaster of The Nurse Keith Show as a guest columnist. Check back every other Thursday for Keith’s column.
