As a population, disabled nurses have not been well studied. While a sizable number of studies have explored attitudes towards and the experiences of disabled nursing students, much less is known about the experiences of these individuals when they enter professional practice as RNs. By the same token, there is a dearth of literature about how impairments acquired by registered nurses during professional life impact their nursing practice and perceptions of their practice and work environments. As a starting point for this research, it was important to review the available literature pertaining to how disability was constructed at a broad societal level and how it is
understood and depicted within the context of nursing. It was also important to examine what published research about disabled nurses there is.
This chapter is divided into three sections. The first section considers how disability has been constructed and prevailing perspectives within the literature. The second section of the literature review examines disability in the context of nursing by exploring perspectives of disability within nursing. Included in this discussion is the examination of the contribution of theorizing within the field of disability studies to nursing scholarship. The section also reviews the literature about portrayals of disability within nursing. Thirdly, the literature review explores research focusing on the lived experience of disabled nursing, providing an outline of the gaps and limitations of this small corpus. The conclusion from this review is that no published Canadian literature could be identified that describes the work experiences and perceptions of disabled RNs.
Constructions of Disablement
Until recently and despite the presence of disabled people throughout much of history, disability was largely the province of all but disabled people themselves (Mitchell & Snyder, 1997; Pfeiffer, 1993; Terzi, 2004). In medieval times disabled people
experienced discrimination, and poor and inequitable treatment based on religious and superstitious beliefs and fears. Religious perspectives conceptualize disability as
punishment for wrongdoing, virtuous suffering, and cases for charitable activity (Otieno, 2009). Disabled people were also associated with witchcraft, evil, and the devil. These beliefs and inhumane treatments notwithstanding, disabled people still contributed in some way to the communities they lived in during this period.
With the arrival of industrialization, discrimination against disabled people became systematized and institutionalized (Metzler, 2011; Wheatley, 2010).
Industrialization in Western societies brought about increasingly detrimental changes for disabled people culminating in their incarceration in asylums, hospitals, and prisons (Barnes, 1991; Burleigh, 1994; Largent, 2008; Porter, 2002). The rise of waged labour, and mechanized, scheduled work changed attitudes towards people with impairments. Disabled people who were unable to do this new type of work were labelled deviants and excluded from participating in the emerging labour market (Malhotra, 2001). Disabled people were segregated into institutions and asylums as attitudes hardened and families unable to care for members with impairments abandoned or sent them off. The
emergence and proliferation of social Darwinism and the eugenics movement in the late 1800s and early 1900s led to further oppression and tragic consequences such as forced sterilization, euthanasia, and, in the most extreme example, extermination (Pfeiffer, 1993, 1994).
The rise of the medical profession in the 19th and 20th centuries brought about a
shift in the way society conceptualized disability (Sullivan, 2011). Underpinned by the Enlightenment pursuit of scientific reasoning, medicine cast a scientific light onto disability, arguing that impairments could be explained scientifically and, therefore, could be addressed by the same means through cure, treatment, or rehabilitation. However, conceptualizing disability as a medical problem has done very little to change social attitudes about disabled people or improve their lives. To the contrary, by many accounts, the medical approach to disability has solidified the belief that disability is an individual problem or defect that required fixing to bring the person closer to being normal. This approach has also reinforced long-standing perceptions of disabled people as weak, dependent, and incapable of fully participating in social life.
Although advocacy on behalf of disabled people existed, it was not until the late 1960s that disabled people themselves began to establish their own organizations to seek human rights and the right to define their identities and futures. The development of this movement has varied according to society; however, similarities cutting across these efforts have fostered a global cross-conscious disability movement. The two primary foci of this global movement have been to garner human rights primarily through legislative and policy changes, and establish an alternative social narrative of disability and
disability identity. This latter advocacy effort has involved challenging the dominance of medical approaches to disability and other related, often negative, conceptualizations and replacing it with alternative narratives of disability.
The disability movement has seeded critical constructions of disability that directly counter the medical model of disability and/or support disabled people’s quest of a disability identity of their own. The result of this early work is an interdisciplinary
field of disability studies that has brought greater epistemological dimension to
disability. The pioneering work of Hunt (1966), Finkelstein (1980, 2001), and the Union of the Physically Impaired Against Segregation (UPIAS) has evolved, with the help of contemporaries Oliver (1990, 1996) and Barnes (1991, 1996ab), into a social model of disability (SMoD). The SMoD refutes the medical model by locating disability outside of the individual and in the social sphere. Other disability theorists and scholars have gone on to problematize this model, arguing for ontological pluralism and a more nuanced understanding of disability that accounts for and reconciles embodied experiences, identity, and impairment with this social-political approach (e.g., Corker & Shakespeare, 2002).
Contemporary theories and approaches to the understanding of disability have been framed and furthered by several key debates. These debates focus on the
relationship between the disabled individual and society, the location of disability, the importance of embodiment, and the role of identity and experiences in theorizing disability.
Individual vs. Social Approaches to Disability
This debate centres on the relationship between the individual and the social environment and is drawn along two distinct lines of understanding disability: 1) disability as a phenomenon located within the individual, and 2) disability as a phenomenon that is outside of the individual and located within the social sphere. According to individual approaches, disability results from either a material condition of the individual (individual-materialist) or is the creation of an individual as they
autonomously interact with others and their environment (individual-idealist) (Priestley, 1998). Among these approaches, the medical model of disability is the most dominant.
The fundamental tenant of the medical model of disability is that disability results from a bio-physiological impairment located within the individual that is associated with
genetics, disease, pathology, or trauma (Swain, French, & Cameron, 2003). Therefore, disabled people are themselves the root cause of their social isolation and other
problems. The medical model purports that through cure, correction, or rehabilitation disabled people can rid themselves of their deviance and achieve the level of normalcy necessary to be accepted by and function within society (Oliver, 1990, 2010).
Detractors of the medical model contend that although medicine established the model as scientific and objective, it is in fact a subjective perspective that is underpinned by longstanding fears and angst about the non-conformity of disabled peoples’ bodies and minds. To the contrary, socio-politically oriented scholars and activists advocate a materialistic understanding of disability, arguing that disability resides outside of the individual within the social environment. They campaign for social perspectives that view disability as being caused by social and cultural forces that shape the experiences of disabled people (Oliver, 1990).
Gabel (2006) has noted that the resistance to individual interpretations of disability that typified disability theorizing (e.g., social perspectives) has given way to what Davis (2010) characterizes as a new wave of theorizing that takes aim at the interpretations that have dominated disability studies. Within the disability studies literature, there are many examples of works that are emblematic of this direction in theorizing. Scholars such as Garland Thompson (2002, 2005) and Meekosha (2006) have taken disability theorizing in new directions by framing and underpinning their work in critical perspective from feminist theory, queer theory, and race studies, to name a few.
The Social Model of Disability
Building on the UPIAS’s materialist ideas about disability as his foundations, Oliver (1983) introduced the SMoD. At the core of the SMoD is the assertion that disability is “the disadvantage of restriction of activity caused by a contemporary social organization which takes little or no account of people with physical [and other]
impairments and thus excludes them from participation in the mainstream of social activities” (UPIAS, 1976). A fundamental tenant of the SMoD is the belief that disability and impairment are recognizably different phenomena with no causal relationship to each other. From the SMoD perspective, disability is a social response to an individual’s impairment or medical condition, and oppression and institutionalized discrimination are the root cause of the issues affecting people with impairments.
Since the SMoD introduction, it has been taken up and furthered by several scholars. Today there are many versions of the SmoD (e.g., Gleeson, 1999). Despite some differences between these models, they all retain the belief that disability is largely socially constructed (Lang, 2001).The SmoD has been critiqued by several disability scholars within disability studies and elsewhere in the academy. Some scholars have commented that the model is narrow and crude in its interpretation of disability and requires a stronger theoretical basis (Croker & Shakespeare, 2002; Shakespeare, 2010; Terzi, 2004). Others have taken issue with how the model interprets the relationship between impairment and disability, noting that impairment is inextricable from the political dimensions of disability given that it is often a major aspect in the lives of disabled people (Croker & Shakespeare, 2002; Crow, 1996; Hughes & Patterson, 1997; Meekosha, 2004; Shakespeare & Watson, 2001).
Notwithstanding these formidable critiques, few would argue that the SmoD has not had an impact as a political tool. The SmoD has been successfully applied in many jurisdictions globally to build the disability movement, politicize a social change agenda, and help gain civil rights in the form of legislation for disabled people (Shakespeare, 2010). To ardent supporters, such as Sheldon (2007) and Oliver (2007; 2010), such successes are reason to further develop rather than dismiss or diminish the model.
Embodiment and Impairment
Impairment and embodiment are important themes in disability discourse and the theorizing of disability. The materiality of disability is at the core of both medical and social model approaches to disability. To medical or individual approaches, disability is a wholly embodied experience, a property of the individual’s body. Conversely, those who support a social model approach to disability adamantly reject this understanding and locate disability outside of the body and elsewhere in the material world (Oliver, 1996). Many worry that acknowledging the role disabled peoples’ bodies play in the experience of disablement runs the risk of re-establishing the dominance of the medical model, which, subsequently, could dispel the socio-political disability movement and its gains (Shakespeare & Watson, 2001). However, in doing so, they almost entirely write out the body in their theorizing of disability.
Other disability theorists support theorizing a social approach to disability that incorporates impairment thereby accounting for the differences in disabled people’s experiences (Hughes & Paterson; Mulvany, 2000; Siebers, 2008; Terzi, 2004). Terzi commented that by severing any links between disability and impairment, the social model loses potency as a theory because we cannot discount the possibility that an individual’s impairment is the very reason why they cannot fully participate in social life.
Further, Siebers (2008) has called for a theory of complex embodiment that “raises awareness of the effects of disabling environments on people’s lived experiences of the body but [also] emphasizes as well that some factors affecting disability, such as chronic pain, secondary health effects, and aging, derive from the body” (p. 25).
Feminist disability studies have contributed considerably to theorizing
embodiment. Feminist disability theorizing counteracts essential notions of the body, conceptualizing disability as encompassing all bodies that are culturally identified as non-normative and uncovering the societal processes involved in identifying and
oppressing these bodies (Garland-Thomson, 2005). Casper and Talley (2006) comment that while this theorizing of disability as a universal category may be political and theoretically useful, it has the potential to dilute the details of impairment or embodiment that may be crucial to understanding lived experiences.
Although theorizing embodiment remains contentious in disability studies, it is extensively engaged within the study of disability and illness within medical sociology. According to Thomas (2004), disability is studied in medical sociology through a social deviance framework in which disability is embodied, “caused by illness and impairment and entails suffering and some social disadvantage” (p. 570). Themes in this area of study include the social experience of living with chronic illness and societal responses to people with disabilities and enduring illness. Disability scholars have critiqued medical sociologists’ treatment of disability (e.g., Oliver, 1990; Mulvany, 2000), arguing that all impairments cannot be studied through an illness framework. Others are cautious about the contributions of medical sociologists’ work, noting that there is the potential for this research to overemphasize the negative aspects of illness at the expense of more complex meaning-making that incorporates social-materialist elements (Shakespeare, 1996;
Thomas, 2010). Furthermore, some theorists have expressed concern that by focusing on illness the SmoD efforts to advance a socio-political ideology and understanding of disability will be hampered (Mulvany, 2000; Oliver, 2010).
Thomas (2004) has argued the divide between medical sociology and disability studies over the embodied nature of disability is the result of a misinterpretation of the conceptual work that underpins the SmoD. Thomas explains that:
the social relational model understanding of disability developed by Vic Finkelstein and Paul Hunt in the 1970s has been lost over time, overshadowed by the rise to prominence of its offspring: the social model of disability. . . . It is important to recognize that, for Finkelstein, [the separation between
impairment and disability] did not mean that living with the effects of
impairment posed no difficulties for disabled people. What it meant was that these difficulties did not make up the substance of disability. Rather, such difficulties were, and should remain, private and personal matters (p. 572). Mulvany (2000) added that while disability theorists have recognized the relationship between impairment and chronic illness, they have also “acceded too much to
medicine…[ignoring] the possibility of exploring the complex relationship existing between embodied impairment and disability [and retreating] from a critical analysis of all aspects of medical involvement in the lives of people with disabilities” (p. 50). In doing so, disability theorists fail to recognize that there is legitimate medical care that is sought out by disabled people. Mulvany recommends that disability scholars should seek out and undertake critical examination of this work as part of the broader project of mapping the terrain of social barriers experienced by disabled people.
Identity and Identity Politics
The concept of identity has been deliberately invoked by disability activists and scholars as part of political and academic practices referred to as identity politics (Sandahl, 2003). At the core of this practice is the examination of how identities are
broadly constructed for social groups and, more specifically, the construction of disabled peoples’ identities. Identity politics also aims to expose how constructed disability identities are linked with vulnerabilities to exploitation, marginalization, and powerlessness. According to Heyes (2009), identity politics:
starts from analyses of oppression to recommend, variously, the reclaiming, redescription, or transformation of previously stigmatized accounts of group membership. Rather than accepting the negative scripts offered by a dominant culture … [a group transforms their] own sense of self and community, often through consciousness-raising (para 2).
Largely through the disability movement, disabled people have been engaging with the notion of disability identity, providing a counter-narrative of what it means to be a person with a disability that opposes those established by traditional approaches such as the medical model. The result of this disability identity politics is an increased awareness of the social dimension of disability and the minority group status of disabled people (Alcoff & Mohanty, 2006; Mollow, 2004). Disability scholars and theorists such as Linton (1998), Garland Thomson (1997), and Siebers (2001, 2002, 2008) have taken on in their work the agenda to have disability recognized as an identity category.
Disability identity politics forms the basis for Swain and French’s (2000) affirmative model of disability. They describe the model as a counter narrative, “a non- tragic view of disability and impairment which encompasses positive social identities, both individual and collective, for disabled people grounded in the benefits of lifestyle of being impaired and disabled” (Swain & French, p. 569). Like the SMoD critique of the medical model, the affirmative model aims to dislodge the narrative that disability is a personal tragedy and replace it with several possible positive narratives. Smith and Sparkes (2008) have noted that the counter narrative of the affirmative model may be liberating for some disabled people as it allows them to reconstruct their identities by
resisting and discarding old gloom-and-doom storylines (e.g., life with a disability is no life or not worth living) and:
expand the cultural repertoire of stories on which to draw when re-plotting a life…therefore as a counter-narrative affirmative model [the model] can have revelatory, liberatory, therapeutic, and transformative possibilities for some individuals and communities by making available and legitimising different ways of living as a disabled person (p. 233).
Disability identity politics is not without criticism (e.g., Davis, 2010; Mollow, 2004). Mollow (2004) has suggested that identity politics “sometimes has the effect of discouraging class analysis, reifying identity categories that might better be contested, creating hierarchies of disability, and fostering antagonism with other minority groups” (292). Supporters of identity politics have responded that such critiques are mostly misguided or mistaken. For example, Houston (1994) has challenged claims that
identities are interchangeable, noting that the practice of substituting identity categories is not a characteristic of identities themselves and is a practice that is externally
imposed. Additionally, Alcoff and Mohanty (2006) remind that identities are complex, theory laden, and can be accurately and plausibly formulated.
Disability in the Context of Nursing
Despite the inroads the disability movement has made, traditional perspectives of disabled people such as medical models have largely influenced how disability is
understood and, subsequently, how disabled people are treated in healthcare and other areas of social life (e.g., education, employment, social policy, housing). Specific to nursing, the influence of traditional conceptualizations of disability is evident within the domains of nursing practice, scholarship, and education.
Portrayals of Disability in Nursing Practice and Scholarship
A number of researchers (e.g., Scullion 1999a, 2000; Boyles, Bailey, & Mosseys, 2008; Smeltzer, Dolen, Robinson-Smith & Zimmerman, 2005) have commented that the depictions and representations of disability in nursing are problematic because they tend to reinforce the systems of oppression that disables people living with impairments. Northway (1997, 2000) contends that nursing’s portrayal of disability is situated within medical models of disability, constructing disability as an individual tragedy and thereby constituting a form of oppression. Northway (2000) has cogently argued that so long as medical models of disability form the theoretical foundations for understanding
disability within nursing, traditional approaches to disability research in nursing will remain unchallenged and nurse-led research is likely to be viewed as oppressive (p. 394395). Richardson (2000) and others (e.g., Boyles et al., 2008; Northway, 1997, 2000) have suggested that nurses must develop an awareness of disability beyond medical approaches by adopting social and critical perspectives of disability and