The article by Jesus et al. (2021) focuses on examining disparities that people with disabilities had to experience during the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic because of social distancing and lockdown policies. The authors defined that the pandemic disproportionally affected people with disabilities and negatively influenced their health due to a lack of disability-inclusive response. The article suggests that healthcare access disparities for people with disability existed for a long time before the pandemic. However, the pandemic substantially exacerbated and widened the existing disparities (Jesus et al., 2021). The consequences included limited access to healthcare, disruption of community support, lack of personal assistance, and an increased burden on families and caregivers. For example, people with cognitive disabilities hospitalized during the COVID-19 pandemic were subjected to new strict visitor policies and experienced trouble in communicating symptoms to staff, which negatively affected their health.
Furthermore, in order to address disability disparities while ensuring positive outcomes for patients, nurses could advocate for patients’ rights. In particular, raising patients’ and leadership’s awareness about disability disparities can significantly improve the problem. As a nurse, I can improve my knowledge of disabilities to ensure that I can provide ethically correct care for people with disabilities. Moreover, it is vital for nurses to learn more about cultural differences and maintain an open mind to provide high-quality healthcare services and make a contribution to the elimination of disparities in healthcare. Lewis’ model of proposed disability disparity implies rendering care for patients with disabilities with cultural competency (Kersey-Matusiak, 2018). Thus, barriers to access to care for members of culturally diverse groups may include incorrect perceptions of the efficiency of traditional medicines and therapy used in different cultures or patients’ attitudes towards pain or death.
References
Jesus, T. S., Bhattacharjya, S., Papadimitriou, C., Bogdanova, Y., Bentley, J., Arango-Lasprilla, J. C., & Kamalakannan, S. (2021). Lockdown-related disparities experienced by people with disabilities during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic: Scoping review with thematic analysis. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(12), 1-24.
Kersey-Matusiak, G. (2018). Delivering culturally competent nursing care: Working with diverse and vulnerable populations. Springer Publishing Company.