Deaf insight is essential knowledge for all doctors. So why don’t they all know it?
What is deaf insight?
1 in 4 UK adults are deaf and this rises to 80% of the over 70s¹. Deafness can affect all elements of an individual’s identity and life experience - their communication, relationships, mental health, and employment, to name a few. However, the needs of deaf people are not routinely taught to doctors as part of their undergraduate education.
We are calling for this to change. IDA believes that making deaf insight part of the undergraduate medical curriculum will be the first step to help create an inclusive health service for deaf people.
What should doctors know?
The General Medical Council (GMC) is the medical regulator and creates the framework for medical school curricula. The GMC’s Outcomes for Graduates² states what newly qualified doctors should know and be able to do. This crucial regulatory document states newly qualified doctors must:
-make the care of patients their first concern
-recognise the potential impact of their attitudes, values, beliefs, perceptions and personal biases (which may be unconscious) on individuals and groups and identify personal strategies to address this
- provide information about options for investigations, treatment and care in a way that enables patients to make decisions about their own care
- act appropriately, with an inclusive approach, towards patients and colleagues
- communicate clearly, sensitively and effectively with patients, their relatives and colleagues by making adjustments to their communication approach if needed, for example for people who communicate differently due to a disability or who speak a different first language
- communicate by spoken, written and electronic methods (including in medical records) clearly, sensitively and effectively with patients, their relatives, and colleagues. This includes when communicating with people who have impaired hearing, language, speech or sight/ when English is not the patient's first language
- Provide explanation, advice and support that matches patients' level of understanding and needs, making reasonable adjustments to facilitate patients' understanding if necessary
These examples are just a few key areas from Outcomes for Graduates which show that it is essential in order to work safely as a doctor that you have the understanding and skills to be able to communicate effectively with deaf patients. This is highlighted in many different ways throughout Outcomes for Graduates, showing all involved in medical education recognise how essential accessible communication is.
However, doctors are not given the specialist education they need to meet the diverse needs of deaf patients. This leads to avoidable health inequalities for deaf people, a vast variation in experience for deaf people and strain on clinicians who want to meet the needs of all patients but have not been equipped with the skills to do so.
What is happening now?
At present, there is extremely patchy access to deaf insight within the medical undergraduate curriculum in the UK. Many medical schools teach on the experiences of deaf people as part of student selected components³ or about the medical background to deafness. However, there is an extreme lack consistent of deaf insight education informed by lived experience. IDA believes newly qualified doctors should understand the heterogeneity of deaf people’s experiences, the sociocultural impacts of deafness, how to communicate with deaf individuals including working with communication professionals such as BSL interpreters and lip-speakers and how to get help when caring for a deaf individual. This would allow all medical students to reach their outcomes for graduates, improve clinician confidence and patient experience but this is not currently happening.
Crucial for patients and carers
The lack of deaf insight in medical education means deaf patients are experiencing frequent preventable harms.
Children have been told to interpret terminal diagnoses to their loved ones⁴; a deaf woman did not realise she was having a limb amputation until waking from surgery to find her lower limb gone⁵ and a deaf patient was given treatment for a miscarriage without this being explained to her⁶. These are just a few of the countless examples happening day in day out which could be avoided if medical students were given appropriate education.
These events not only cause harm in the immediacy but have wide ranging ongoing impacts. Including effects on individuals’ personal wellbeing and mental health, reduce trust in health care services, reduce likelihood of presenting with new health needs and cause distress and vicarious trauma for the individual’s wider network.
Crucial for other healthcare staff
Doctors want to provide just and accessible care to all, so their lack of training and the challenges they experience providing care to deaf patients causes moral injury for many doctors, which is shown to have a significant impact on wellbeing and mental health⁷.
We must also consider the impact of a lack of deaf insight on the wider healthcare workforce. Doctors are leaders, educators and managers in healthcare services. I have faced personally extreme audism from other doctors due to their lack of deaf insight, from offensive language, people being shocked I had even had a higher education and direct discrimination in being denied communication support by other doctors.
A diverse workforce benefits everyone- patients, carers and staff. But deaf clinicians face frequent prejudice and their wellbeing suffers causing overall poor retention in healthcare roles. It is crucial that doctors learn deaf insight to be not only inclusive managers and team members, but to be able to go beyond this and be allies and champions for the positive impact that having deaf clinicians in the health service brings.
Wider knowledge on accessibility
Deaf insight is crucial, but the lack of it speaks to a wider lack of focus on accessibility and the experiences of disabled people across medical education.
Doctors are at the forefront of the health service, but they hear about the experience of disabled people in siloed parts of their curriculum and often through a medical model. Doctors still have a very medicalised view of disability, leading to continued use of medicalised impairment-based language within medicine, lack of recognition of patient experience and expertise and harmful attitudes towards their disabled colleagues.
The experiences of disabled doctors is well recognised to be poor, a recent study by the BMA showed 58% of doctors who are disabled, neurodivergent or have a long term health condition, felt that ableism was a bigger problem in medicine than in wider society⁸. Medicine is a caring and compassionate profession, where we look after the most vulnerable people in society at often the most vulnerable time in their lives- ableism has no place in our profession.
There are also several legal binding standards in place to protect disabled patients and carers and promote their health access. Most notable of these is the NHS Accessible Information Standard, 2016. The AIS aims to ensure that anyone with a communication or information need secondary to a disability or sensory loss has this need met- with deaf people forming a significant part of the group whose needs fall under the AIS⁹. However, a recent RNID study showed that at least 32% of professionals were unaware of the AIS¹⁰, this is surveying a wider group of clinicians, but anecdotal evidence shows that awareness amongst doctors of the AIS is very poor. This is because in part the AIS is not being taught in the undergraduate curriculum alongside its related standard, the reasonable adjustments digital flag.
If doctors are to meet their outcome for graduates, they must fundamentally understand how to provide accessible communication and the legal and professional standards around this.
Conclusion
Deaf insight is crucial knowledge for all undergraduate medical students who will go on to be the doctors and medical leaders of the future. It is essential, that deaf insight training informed by those with lived experience forms a core part of undergraduate medical education. Without it they risk not only unintentional harms on their patients, but also colleagues too.
1- Ackeroyd MA, Browning GG, Davis AC, Haggard MP. Hearing in Adults: A Digital Reprint of the Main Report From the MRC National Study of Hearing. Trends in Hearing. 2019 Jan;23:233121651988761.
2- General Medical Council. (2018). Outcomes for graduates. London: GMC
3- Gilmore, M., Sturgeon, A., Thomson, C., Bell, D., Ryan, S., Bailey, J., McGlade, K. and Woodside, J.V. (2019). Changing medical students’ attitudes to and knowledge of deafness: a mixed methods study. BMC Medical Education, [online] 19(1). doi:10.1186/s12909-019-1666-z.
4- Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (2026). Teenager had to tell his Deaf mother that her father might die after hospital failed to provide interpreters. [online] Ombudsman.org.uk. Available at: https://www.ombudsman.org.uk/news-and-blog/news/teenager-had-tell-his-deaf-mother-her-father-might-die-after-hospital-failed [Accessed 17 Sept. 2026].
5- BSL Advisory Board (2025). Locked out: Exclusion of deaf and deafblind BSL users from health and social care in the UK (full report – BSL and English versions) - GOV.UK. [online] Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/bsl-user-experience-of-health-and-social-care-in-uk/locked-out-exclusion-of-deaf-and-deafblind-bsl-users-from-health-and-social-care-in-the-uk-full-report-bsl-and-english-versions [Accessed 17 Sept. 2026].
6- Vass, E. (2026). Major NHS training gap is putting millions of deaf people at risk. [online] RNID. Available at: https://rnid.org.uk/2026/01/major-nhs-training-gap-is-putting-millions-of-deaf-people-at-risk/ [Accessed 17 Sept. 2026].
7- Čartolovni, A., Stolt, M., Scott, P.A. and Suhonen, R. (2021). Moral injury in healthcare professionals: A scoping review and discussion. Nursing Ethics, [online] 28(5), pp.590–602. doi:10.1177/0969733020966776.
8- British Medical Association. (2025). Disability and Neurodivergence in the medical profession. London: BMA
9- NHS England (2025). NHS England » Accessible information standard. [online] England.nhs.uk. Available at: https://www.england.nhs.uk/accessible-information-standard/ [Accessed 17 Sept. 2026].
10- Royal National Institute for Deaf People, SignHealth. Still ignored: The fight for accessible healthcare [Internet]. London: RNID/SignHealth; 2025 Apr. Available AT: https://rnid.org.uk/get-involved/campaign-with-us/fight-for-accessible-healthcare/. [Accessed 17 Sept. 2026].