( N Engl J Med . 2025;393:937-939. doi: 10.1056/NEJMp2505952.) Physicians often report feeling unprepared to care for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDDs), mainly because their medical training provides minimal exposure to this area. This lack of confidence has been identified as a significant obstacle to accessible, high-quality health care for individuals with IDDs. Despite these known gaps, internal-medicine residency programs rarely include structured education on disability care. A national survey of program directors for internal-medicine-based primary-care residencies found that many believe their trainees are insufficiently equipped to care for patients with disabilities; nevertheless, only a small minority of programs include any disability-related content, and even fewer address IDD-specific issues.
Clarke et al. (Sun,) studied this question.