Attitude of Medical Professionals Towards Persons with Disabilities

Objective: To assess the attitude of medical professionals towards the disabled persons. Study Design: Cross sectional Prospective Survey Place and Duration: The study was conducted in different hospitals of Rawalpindi and Islamabad from October 2015 to January 2016. Materials and Methods: This cross sectional study recruited 230 medical staff members consisting of doctors and nurses through purposive sampling technique. The inclusion criteria were having age group between 30 an 50 years, with an experience of more than 5 years in service. A self reported questionnaire was used to gather data by using “Interaction with disabled persons” (IDP) scale. SPSS was used to carry out the data analysis. Results: Females constituted 66.7% participants in the study population while males were only 33.3%. Nurses had the highest percentage with 54.7% while doctors were 45.3%. All the participants had a mean personal score of 76.74 and standard deviation of 12.02 (n=230) on this questionnaire suggesting that respondents had a more negative attitude towards people with disabilities. Female participants had a mean IDP score of 78.16 + 11.81 and male had 74.08 I+ 11.92. Conclusion: From the results of the study, it is concluded that medical staff members had a more negative attitude towards people with disabilities.