Poster: Technical Standards at Newly Established Medical Schools

Technical standards (TSs) are documents that outline the non-academic criteria that medical students must meet in order to successfully matriculate to and graduate from a medical school. The creation of TSs is legally required for any medical school seeking accreditation. Despite ongoing research and advice, many medical schools still use outdated guidelines when constructing their TS that contain exclusive language that can make it difficult for students with disabilities to matriculate and graduate. TSs thus presents one of the first of many barriers for students with disabilities who are seeking to train as physicians. Using an analytical framework created in 2016 for a national survey of medical schools' TSs, we analyzed the TSs from 14 newly-accredited medical schools (including CIMED) to see if the new schools' TSs are more inclusive for students with disabilities.