“This Is My Superpower”

By Denny Watkins
September 27, 2024 | VOLUME 2, ISSUE 3

In 2017, Congress considered gutting the Americans with Disabilities Act, which is the 1990 law that requires wheelchair ramps next to stairs and braille buttons in elevators. In part, the proposal would make it harder for people to sue businesses that fail to provide accommodations.

At its House of Delegates meeting in Honolulu that fall, the American Medical Association (AMA) drafted a statement opposing altering the bill. But a few physicians—many of whom are business owners themselves—suggested that the AMA should consider how the proposed revisions could lower their operating expenses.

Joanna Turner Bisgrove, MD, a Chicago-based family medicine practitioner, felt only rising fury at the idea of even considering changes to the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Dr. Bisgrove was born with a hearing impairment and wore a device that connected directly to the meeting’s sound system to let her listen clearly. She stood up from her seat, surrounded by the hundreds of other AMA delegates, and pulled back her hair to show the device in her ear. “I’m a person with a disability, and I have patients with disabilities,” Dr. Bisgrove said. “On behalf of myself and all my patients, leave the resolution alone.”

Dr. Bisgrove’s plea turned the tide of the discussion, and the AMA voted during the session to continue supporting the Americans with Disabilities Act as written.

Since then, Dr. Bisgrove’s role as a disability advocate within the AMA has grown in scope. Earlier this year, the AMA formed its first 14-member Disability Advisory Group, with Dr. Bisgrove as the inaugural Chair. “There were two requirements to be in the advisory group,” Dr. Bisgrove said. “Be a member of the AMA and have a disability.”

The advisory group has two mandates. The first is to improve how the AMA itself provides accommodations for its members with disabilities at meetings and events. That includes details like setting up a wireless microphone in meeting rooms (in addition to the ones mounted on podiums) so that members who use a wheelchair can testify and ensuring that meeting locations are either fully ADA-compliant or can make all the necessary modifications to their space before the event.

Second, the Disability Advisory Group will be helping to create educational content to train clinicians on how to more effectively interact with patients with disabilities and work with clinician colleagues who have disabilities.

That means helping those without disabilities to understand that “having a disability is not an ending,” Dr. Bisgrove said. “It's just part of who you are. You make the right adjustments, and a lot of people can be successful.”

Dr. Bisgrove was born with a hearing impairment that worsened when she was 9 years old, after doctors prescribed an ototoxic antibiotic to fight what turned out to be a case of viral meningitis.

She was crushed to realize that meant she wouldn’t achieve her childhood dream: becoming an astronaut. But Dr. Bisgrove never felt like her hearing loss would prevent her from becoming a doctor. “I was very fortunate to have allies who championed me,” she said.

Dr. Bisgrove’s father, David Turner, MD, was a career radiologist at Rush University in Chicago who eventually chaired the Department of Radiology. Her childhood audiologist at Rush was also on the medical school admissions committee and worked to make sure Dr. Bisgrove would have the accommodations she needed.

In 1999, Dr. Bisgrove became the first ever medical student at Rush University with an accommodated disability. (This fall, the incoming class of 230 medical students at Rush included 13 students with disability accommodations—the highest number since the school started tracking it.) “I learned from the process that sometimes you need to use whatever privilege you have to work to overcome a barrier,” she said.

In her family medicine practice now, Dr. Bisgrove uses an artificial intelligence computer scribe that takes notes for her—allowing her to read a patient’s lips and focus on their interaction. The hospital also provides transparent surgical masks for her patients to wear, which helps her read lips. Dr. Bisgrove also uses a special amplified stethoscope during examinations.

“This is my superpower,” Dr. Bisgrove said. “I’ve seen firsthand that my patients with disabilities say, ‘Oh my goodness, you get me.’ Of course I do, I’m one of you.”

While 28.7% of US adults have some form of disability, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a 2021 study in JAMA Network Open estimated that just 3% of physicians have a disability.

That disparity has real consequences. A 2023 study in JAMA Health Forum found that physicians with disabilities earn 20.8% less annually and 13.3% less hourly than physicians without a disability.