Disability Workshop

philosophised at 9:22 PM

We had a disability workshop about visual impairment today. Someone came down to us to talk about how it is like to be a visually impaired person. We then had to walk down the street outside our school either with our eyes closed or wear special simulator glasses to get a feel of what it is like being blind or visually impaired.

The instructor (who is severely visually impaired herself) started out by telling us to close our eyes and then asking us how we feel physically and mentally. There were like twenty of us in the room, and almost all of us described negative emotions when we had our eyes closed — helplessness, dependence, embarrassment, claustrophobia, sense of loss, disorientation, self-consciousness. It is interesting because this is how we assumed blind or visually impaired people to be feeling, and we as future doctors will often empathise with them in the wrong way. Blindness or visually impairment need not always come with emotional stress.

One thing I am also quite impressed about is how much support the UK government provides to these people, which you will probably not find in other countries. The Royal National Institute for the Blind, for instance, offers services ranging from leisure advisory to help visually impaired people in their leisure activities, to resource centres where you can buy Braille birthday cards, talking clocks and watches, thick marker pens, special grids to measure notes, signature strips, modified spectacles with magnifier, and other specialist equipment, to employment officers where these disabled people can seek career advice and even get someone to be your personal reader to read out stuff for you. It's quite an eye-opener how little we know about these people in our society.

We also realised how much trouble and responsibility it takes to keep a guide dog. Apparently trivial things like getting dog hairs all over your coat when you're out, as you can't see them and don't know they are there until someone points it out to you, can be quite frustrating (probably it feels a bit like having bits of vegetable stuck between your teeth). Then there's always the emotional transition when you started out trying to be normal, going out without walking stick, stumbling and fumbling over things, then realising that it's probably easier to just accept your disability and get a walking stick, because everyone will now know that you're visually impaired and therefore respond more appropriately.

Generally I really appreciate how our curriculum is not only focused on the medical science part of the thing. I for one enjoyed the morning session because being a doctor is more than being able to recite drug names off the top of your head and name every single part of the human body. There are still much for us to learn, in dealing with people, being sensitive and putting ourselves in other people's shoes.