Disability education in Korean medical school curricula: current status and challenges

Abstract

Background

Persons with disabilities experience persistent health disparities, and limited provider knowledge, negative attitudes, and poor communication have been identified as consistent contributors. Despite the growing international debate regarding the necessity of disability education in medical schools, no national study has examined how it is implemented in Korea. This study examines the current status of disability education in Korean medical school curricula and compares the findings with those from selected international contexts.

Methods

This descriptive cross-sectional survey analyzed publicly available curriculum data from all 40 medical schools and graduate medical schools registered with the Korea Association of Medical Colleges as of May 2026. Each institution was assigned to one of four codes: Code A (standalone required disability course), Code B (standalone elective), Code C (disability-related keywords indirectly inferable from medical humanities course titles or descriptions), or Code D (medical humanities courses with no disability-related content identified). A cross-national comparison with the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and Japan was conducted across five criteria: relevant legislation, accreditation standards, competency frameworks, mandatory status, and survey research.

Results

No institution offered a standalone disability course (Code A: 0; Code B: 0). Of the 40 institutions, 35 (87.5%) offered medical humanities courses with no disability-related content identified (Code D), and five (12.5%) included disability-related keywords indirectly inferable from course titles or descriptions, although these could not be verified at the syllabus level (Code C). The cross-national comparison found that all five countries have disability-related legislation; however, none has directly linked such legislation to medical school curricula. Only the United States has a dedicated competency framework, which is not formally linked to accreditation standards. National survey research was identified only in Australia and partially in the United Kingdom and the United States.

Conclusions

No standalone course on disability understanding was documented in the publicly available curricula of any Korean medical school, despite relevant legislation and widespread medical humanities provision. This gap is not unique to Korea. As a policy direction, the development of a Korea-specific disability competency framework, its incorporation into accreditation standards, and ongoing monitoring could support the realization of the Disability Act’s educational purpose in medical education.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-026-10332-5.

Introduction

Disability has long been understood as a personal problem arising from physical or mental impairment. However, the paradigm has shifted toward understanding disability as the product of interactions between individuals and environmental barriers. This shift was advanced internationally through the WHO’s International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) [1] and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) [2]. Korea has increasingly reflected this perspective in its disability-related laws and policies.

Approximately 16% of the global population experiences significant disability [3]. Persons with disabilities are widely recognized as a group that faces persistent health inequities in healthcare access and quality [4]. Despite having higher rates of chronic disease and greater healthcare needs than non-disabled individuals, persons with disabilities encounter numerous barriers to accessing healthcare, including communication difficulties, physical access limitations, and negative attitudes or limited understanding among healthcare providers. Prior research has consistently identified limited provider knowledge, negative attitudes, and poor communication skills as important contributors to these health disparities. A global scoping review found that healthcare workers often lacked the knowledge and confidence to care for persons with disabilities, and that discriminatory attitudes and communication difficulties were documented across services, regions, and income levels [5]. Such attitudes are not always evident to providers themselves: among more than 25,000 healthcare providers, most showed an implicit preference for non-disabled people, often diverging from their stated attitudes [6]. A survey of 714 practicing physicians in the United States by Iezzoni et al. [7] found that the majority perceived the quality of life of persons with disabilities to be lower than that of non-disabled individuals, and that fewer than half were confident in their ability to provide appropriate care to patients with disabilities. These findings indicate that provider preparedness concerns knowledge and communication as well as attitudes.

Hence, the necessity of disability-related education in medical schools has been increasingly discussed in medical education. Prior studies reported a general shortage of disability-related education in medical school curricula, with most content limited to single-session lectures or elective offerings [8–10]. Ali et al. [11] found in a scoping review that integrating disability education into medical curricula was associated with positive changes in students’ attitudes toward persons with disabilities. In 2019, the Alliance for Disability in Health Care Education (ADHCE) in the United States published the Core Competencies on Disability for Health Care Education, proposing a competency-based approach to disability education [12]. However, despite growing international debate on the need for such education, the number of countries that have systematically institutionalized it within medical curricula remains limited.

In Korea, approximately 2.62 million people were registered as persons with disabilities as of 2025 [13]. The importance of health rights and healthcare access for this population increases with aging and the chronic disease burden [14]. In response, Article 14 of the Act on Guarantee of Rights to Health and Access to Medical Services for Persons with Disabilities (hereinafter, the Disability Act), which came into effect in 2017, established a legal basis. It recommends that the state and local governments educate healthcare providers involved in the care and rehabilitation of persons with disabilities. However, this provision is discretionary rather than mandatory [15]. Lee and Park [16] proposed a disability-related health rights curriculum for medical students using a modified Delphi method, contributing to domestic discourse on the need for disability education. However, despite these efforts, no national empirical study has examined how disability education is implemented in Korean medical school curricula. Section 2.4 of the KIMEE accreditation standards requires every medical school to operate a medical humanities curriculum [17], and a nationwide analysis of all 40 Korean medical schools identified 802 medical humanities courses distributed across all six years of the curriculum, with course numbers highest in the premedical years and declining thereafter [18]. Whether disability understanding has been incorporated within these curricula, however, has not been examined. It therefore remains unclear whether the quantitative expansion of medical humanities education has been accompanied by a corresponding breadth of curricular content — a question this study was designed to address.

Therefore, this study analyzed publicly available curriculum data from all 40 medical schools and graduate medical schools in Korea to identify the current status of disability education. Furthermore, it compared the findings with relevant legislation, medical education accreditation standards, competency frameworks, and survey research from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Japan. Through this analysis, it highlighted the structural position and institutional gaps of disability education in Korean medical education, and derived policy implications for its future institutionalization.

Methods

Analysis of curricula at 40 Korean medical schools and graduate medical schools

This study was a descriptive cross-sectional survey designed to identify the current status of disability education in Korean medical school curricula. All 40 member institutions of the Korea Association of Medical Colleges (KAMC) were included as the study population [19]. Data were collected from the most recent curriculum materials publicly available on each institution’s official website, with a reference date of May 2026. This study conceptualized disability education from a humanistic and social perspective, consistent with the ICF [1] and the CRPD [2]. Disability education was understood as education directed at understanding disability as a product of interaction between individuals and environmental barriers, rather than as training in the clinical assessment or rehabilitation of impairment. Accordingly, the scope of analysis encompassed all courses across the pre-medical and medical years, except clinical practicum courses in rehabilitation medicine.

Rather than requesting individual syllabi from each institution, this study restricted its analysis to materials publicly available on official websites. Direct requests were not pursued for two reasons. First, voluntary institutional requests yield uneven response, and institutions with little disability-related content may be less likely to respond; partial response of this kind would have compromised the inclusion of all 40 institutions without exception, which is a principal strength of this study. Second, publicly disclosed curriculum materials have been used in a previous nationwide analysis of medical humanities curricula in Korean medical schools [18], establishing them as a workable basis for curriculum analysis at the national level.

The four-code framework was developed by the authors for this study, as no established scheme was available for auditing disability content across an entire national medical education system. The framework is organized along two dimensions: whether disability content is delivered as a standalone course or embedded within broader courses, and whether such provision is required or elective. Each institution’s curriculum was classified using the four-code system, with the operational definitions and criteria for assignment summarized in Table 1. Disability-related keywords were identified at two levels. Direct terms — “disability” and “persons with disabilities” — were specified a priori. Indirect terms were not drawn from a pre-existing list: they were derived inductively during review of the medical humanities course titles and descriptions collected. Expressions denoting populations that encounter barriers to care were retained as candidate indicators of courses within which disability might be addressed; these were “consideration and diversity,” “socially vulnerable groups,” and “healthcare access and inequality.” Because such expressions are broad and not specific to disability, their use alone was not treated as decisive. Classification at the Code C–D boundary followed three rules, applied in order. First, where a course title or description named disability explicitly, the institution was assigned Code C (institutions 3 and 4). Second, where a course title or description used a broad term denoting populations that encounter barriers to care, the institution was assigned Code C (institutions 1, 2, and 5). Third, where no such term was identified in any course title or description, the institution was assigned Code D. The second rule requires a judgment as to whether a given term denotes such a population; the documented basis for each Code C classification is recorded in Appendix 1 so that readers may evaluate these judgments individually. Analysis proceeded in the following order: collection of course lists, identification of medical humanities courses, keyword review, and code assignment.

Table 1.

Coding framework for the analysis of disability education

Code	Definition	Criteria for assignment
A	Independent course on disability understanding (required)	The course title identifies disability understanding as the subject of the course
B	Independent course on disability understanding (elective)	As for Code A, offered as an elective
C	No independent disability course; disability-related keywords inferable from medical humanities course titles or descriptions (syllabus not confirmed)	(i) disability named explicitly in title or description; or (ii) a broad term denoting populations that encounter barriers to care appears in the title or description
D	Medical humanities courses in operation; no disability-related keywords identified in course titles or descriptions	No disability-related term identified in any course title or description

* Assignments rest on publicly available course information. Classifications at the C–D boundary may change upon syllabus review

Coding was conducted by two authors, both of whom hold doctoral degrees and work in medical education. The first author carried out the primary coding, assigning each institution a code and recording the documented basis for each assignment. The corresponding author then reviewed all 40 classifications together with the first author, examining them against the operational definitions and the recorded evidence to confirm that the codes were mutually exclusive and consistently applied. Borderline cases were discussed individually until agreement was reached. Because classifications were determined jointly rather than through independent duplicate coding, a formal measure of inter-rater agreement was not applicable to this design.

In one case, this procedure could not be applied directly: a medical humanities course was listed under an abbreviated title (DMH Medical Communication) whose content could not be determined from the publicly available materials. A published article [20], identified through reference searching rather than a systematic supplementary search, documented that this course addressed communication with persons with disabilities and their families, and the institution was assigned Code C on this basis. No other institution required such a source, and because [20] reports curricula as of 2020, this classification is flagged as unverified in the Appendix.

Cross-national comparative analysis

The United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Japan were selected as comparator countries on two criteria: the presence of an internationally established medical education accreditation system, and the availability of sufficient publicly accessible literature or official documents on disability-related legislation and medical education policy. The countries selected also represent geographic and institutional diversity: North America (United States), Europe (United Kingdom), Oceania (Australia), and Asia (Japan).

The status of each country was compared across five criteria:

1.  Existence of disability-related legislation and its relevance to medical education

2.  Existence of disability education-related provisions in medical education accreditation standards

3.  Existence of a competency framework for disability education

4. Whether disability education is mandated within medical school curricula

5. Whether national survey research exists on the status of disability education in medical schools

Official government documents and publicly available materials from accreditation bodies were used as primary sources, comprising national disability legislation, medical education accreditation standards, national curriculum guidelines, and disability competency frameworks where these existed. The specific documents examined for each country are identified in the Results.

Survey research on educational status was identified through PubMed and Google Scholar searches, using combinations of the terms disability, education, curriculum, competencies, awareness, and training, together with undergraduate medical education and the name of each country. Terms were combined with Boolean operators rather than searched as fixed phrases. The literature search was conducted with a reference date of May 2026, and no date restriction was applied to publication year. Records were considered eligible if they (i) reported the status of disability-related education in medical schools, (ii) addressed multiple institutions at a national or system-wide level rather than a single institution or a single course, and (iii) were published in English. Titles and abstracts were screened by both authors, and full texts of potentially eligible records were examined. Documents published in a country’s national language were additionally consulted where identified through the official documents described above or through reference tracking. Where no eligible study was identified for a country, this was recorded as an absence of national survey evidence rather than as evidence that no such education is delivered. This search was intended to characterize whether and how national survey evidence exists in each comparator country; it was not conducted as a systematic review, and no formal quality appraisal was undertaken.

Results

Analysis of curricula at 40 Korean medical schools and graduate medical schools

The analysis found that no institution offered a standalone course dedicated to disability understanding (Code A: 0; Code B: 0). Of the 40 institutions, 35 (87.5%) offered medical humanities courses under various titles, such as Patient-Doctor-Society, and Medical and Social Humanities, as required courses, from pre-medical through medical school. However, no disability-related content was identified in any course title or description (Code D). In the remaining five institutions (12.5%), disability-related keywords were inferred from medical humanities course titles or descriptions without syllabus-level confirmation (Code C).

The basis for each Code C classification is detailed in Appendix 1. In three institutions (1, 2, and 5), disability content was inferred from broad terms — in the course title for two institutions and in the course description for the third — with no explicit reference to disability. In the other two (3 and 4), disability was named explicitly, but always as a topic within a larger course rather than as an independent offering. None of the five institutions met the criteria for independent disability education.

Clinical practicum courses in rehabilitation medicine were offered at most institutions but fell outside the scope of this analysis for the reason stated in the Methods.

Cross-national comparison

United States

The United States enacted the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990, establishing a legal framework prohibiting discrimination against persons with disabilities across employment, public services, public accommodations, and communications. Healthcare providers must provide reasonable accommodations; however, the legislation does not directly regulate disability competency education for healthcare providers [21]. The LCME’s AY 2025–26 accreditation standards require that health equity and social determinants of health be addressed in the curriculum. Nonetheless, they do not specifically identify persons with disabilities as a target group or require disability education as an independent item [22].

The ADHCE published the Core Competencies on Disability for Health Care Education in 2019, comprising six core competencies:

1. Contextual and conceptual frameworks of disability.

2. Professionalism and patient-centered care.

3. Legal obligations and responsibilities.

4. Team- and systems-based practice.

5. Clinical assessment.

6. Clinical care across the lifespan.

It emphasizes the integration of disability competencies throughout medical education, meaningful participation of persons with disabilities, and clinical experience. However, this framework is not formally linked to LCME accreditation standards and relies on voluntary institutional adoption [12].

Lee et al. [8] investigated the current status of disability core competency education at US medical schools using a mixed-methods approach. Among 14 responding medical schools, most reported covering a substantial portion of the core competencies, yet their depth and breadth varied considerably. Approximately half offered only one or two disability-related learning activities, most of which were single sessions of 45 min to two hours. Long-term educational experiences were primarily elective and rarely integrated across the curriculum. Furthermore, the participation of persons with disabilities was often limited to panelist or patient roles. The researchers concluded that formally incorporating disability education into LCME accreditation standards is essential for ensuring systematic education independent of individual faculty willingness or resources.

United Kingdom

The Equality Act 2010 prohibits discrimination based on nine protected characteristics, including disability, and imposes a public sector equality duty. Healthcare providers must provide reasonable adjustments for patients with disabilities. However, the legislation does not directly mandate disability education in medical school curricula [23].

The GMC’s Outcomes for Graduates (2018) specify knowledge, skills, and attitudes for all United Kingdom medical graduates, with curriculum mapping to these outcomes required from each medical school. Disability-related content is indirectly included in Outcome 2j (recognizing the potential impact of one’s attitudes and prejudices on individuals and groups), Outcome 10a (adapting communication for patients who communicate differently due to disability), and Outcome 7d (assessing needs and support of patients from vulnerable groups, including those with learning disabilities) [24]. However, no independent graduation outcome item addresses disability explicitly, no specific standards for duration or method of education are provided, and no separate disability-specific competency framework exists. National surveys were conducted in 1990 [25] and 1994 [26]. However, no comparable survey has been conducted for approximately 30 years, leaving the current state of disability education in UK medical schools without recent evidence.

Australia

Australia’s Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (DDA) prohibits discrimination on the grounds of disability. However, it does not directly regulate disability education in medical school curricula. Healthcare providers must provide reasonable adjustments, yet no specific standards for competency education are articulated to fulfil this obligation [27]. The AMC’s Standards for Assessment and Accreditation of Primary Medical Programs 2023, effective January 2024, explicitly classifies persons with disabilities as a “community group experiencing health inequities” in its glossary – the only instance among the five comparator countries to do so at the definitional level. However, no provisions require disability education as an independent graduation outcome or articulate specific curricular standards [28].

Australia has seen the most systematic survey research among the comparator nations. Trollor et al. [9] surveyed all 20 accredited Australian medical schools on intellectual disability content. Among the 14 that participated, the median hours of required intellectual disability education were only 2.55 h, with key topics insufficiently addressed. A 20-year comparative study [29] across eight schools showed no significant change between 1995 (median 2.5 h) and 2013/14 (median 2.8 h). While general medicine teaching increased, pediatrics and psychiatry decreased, consumer-led education increased slightly, and direct clinical contact decreased.

Japan

Japan’s Act for Eliminating Discrimination against Persons with Disabilities, enacted in 2013 and effective in 2016, prohibits discrimination on the grounds of disability [30]. A 2021 amendment, enforced in April 2024, made reasonable accommodation legally mandatory for private sector operators [31]. However, this legislation does not regulate disability education in medical school curricula.

The Model Core Curriculum for Medical Education in Japan, led by MEXT, functions as a common guideline for all Japanese medical schools, which base approximately two-thirds of their learning hours on it [32]. The 2022 revised edition introduced new elements, including generalism — defined as approaching patients’ problems across organ systems, taking psychosocial background into account, and practising beyond one’s own specialty — and information technology; however, disability education was not included as an independent item [33]. Furthermore, the guideline has no legal binding force, and no separate disability-specific competency framework exists. Moreover, no national-level survey examining disability education in Japanese medical schools has been identified in the literature, indicating that, as in Korea, the status of disability education has not been systematically examined.

Integrated cross-national comparison

The five-country comparison identified three common patterns (Table 2). First, there is an absence of linkage between legislation and medical education. All five countries have disability-related legislation. However, none has established specific provisions directly linking the legislation to medical school curricula. Korea is formally the most explicit, as Article 14 of its Disability Act includes a recommendation clause for disability health education targeting healthcare providers. Nonetheless, this remains a recommendation and does not guarantee mandatory compliance [15].

Table 2.

Cross-national comparison of disability education in medical school curricula

Item	Korea	United States	United Kingdom	Australia	Japan
Relevant legislation¹	Act on Guarantee of Rights to Health and Access to Medical Services for Persons with Disabilities (2017) – recommendation clause on healthcare provider education (Article 14); not mandatory	ADA (1990) – prohibits disability discrimination; mandates reasonable accommodation; no direct regulation of medical education	Equality Act (2010) – prohibits disability discrimination; mandates reasonable adjustments; no direct regulation of medical education	DDA (1992) – prohibits disability discrimination; mandates reasonable adjustments; no direct regulation of medical education	Act for Eliminating Discrimination against Persons with Disabilities (enacted 2013, effective 2016, revised 2021, enforced April 2024) – prohibits disability discrimination; reasonable accommodation legally mandatory for private sector operators (2024); no direct regulation of medical education
Accreditation standards linkage²	KIMEE – no independent item; no law–accreditation linkage	LCME (AY 2025–26) – requires health equity and social determinants in curriculum; no specific mention of disability; no independent item	GMC Outcomes for Graduates (2018) – disability-related content indirectly included in Outcomes 2j, 7d, 10a; curriculum mapping required	AMC Standards (2023, effective January 2024) – classifies persons with disabilities as a community group experiencing health inequities; no independent graduation outcome item	Model Core Curriculum (2022 revision) – common guideline for all Japanese medical schools; no independent disability item; no legal binding force
Competency framework³	None	Available – ADHCE Core Competencies (2019): 6 core competencies; not formally linked to LCME standards	None	None	None
Mandatory status⁴	None – recommendation only	None	None	None	None
Survey of educational status⁵	No national survey identified before this study – present study: census of 40 institutions; Code A + B: 0% (0), Code C: 12.5% (5), Code D: 87.5% (35)	Lee et al. [8]: 14 schools surveyed; approximately half offered only 1–2 activities; most were single sessions of 45 min to 2 h	Marshall & Haines [25] and Kahtan et al. [26]; no national survey conducted in approximately 30 years	Trollor et al. [9]: 14 schools, median 2.55 h; Trollor et al. [29]: 8 schools, median 2.8 h; no meaningful change over 20 years	No national survey identified

ADA  Americans with Disabilities Act, ADHCE  Alliance for Disability in Health Care Education, AMC  Australian Medical Council, DDA  Disability Discrimination Act, GMC  General Medical Council, KIMEE  Korean Institute of Medical Education and Evaluation, LCME Liaison Committee on Medical Education

¹Existence of disability-related legislation and its relevance to medical education

²Existence of disability education-related provisions in medical education accreditation standards

³Existence of a dedicated competency framework for disability education

⁴Whether disability education is legally or institutionally mandated within medical school curricula

⁵Existence of national-level survey research on disability education status in each country’s medical schools

Second, there is a lack of linkage between competency frameworks and accreditation standards. Only the United States has a dedicated disability competency framework [12]. However, it is not formally linked to LCME accreditation standards and relies on voluntary adoption. The GMC’s graduation outcomes in the United Kingdom indirectly include disability-related content. However, they do not provide specific educational standards [24]. No disability-specific competency framework exists in the remaining countries.

Third, there is insufficient empirical documentation of educational status. Australia has seen repeated national surveys by Trollor et al. [9, 29]. In the United Kingdom, national surveys were conducted in 1990 [25] and 1994 [26]. In the United States, Lee et al.’s [8] survey covered only 14 schools and did not constitute a census. In Korea and Japan, no national survey has been identified.

Discussion

The implications extend beyond the observation that disability education was “insufficient.” Although Section 2.4 of KIMEE’s Accreditation Standards (ASK 2026) requires all 40 Korean medical schools to operate medical humanities courses [17], disability understanding has not been systematically incorporated within them. While it cannot be ruled out that disability may be addressed sporadically at the discretion of individual instructors, the findings indicate that no institutionally guaranteed disability education was identified. Given that content not covered in medical school curricula is difficult to acquire systematically once physicians enter clinical practice, this structural gap may have implications for the experiences of patients with disabilities in actual clinical settings.

Notably, medical humanities education in Korean medical schools has matured considerably in quantitative terms. All 40 institutions operate medical humanities courses, and most offer required courses spanning pre-medical through medical years under various titles. This quantitative expansion has been built on an institutional foundation, given that ASK 2026 requires the operation of medical humanities curricula [17]. However, this study found that quantitative growth in medical humanities education was not accompanied by the incorporation of disability content. The absence of explicit reference to persons with disabilities within the scope of “human experience” addressed by medical humanities education points to an area where its content has yet to be sufficiently expanded. Given that the purpose of medical humanities education is to cultivate the capacity to understand patients within their social, cultural, and personal contexts, disability may be considered one of the core topics that medical humanities education could actively incorporate. Disability is an important dimension of human diversity, and its integration into curricula is consistent with the inherent purpose of medical humanities education.

As a State Party to the CRPD, Korea is subject to Article 25(d), which requires States Parties to require health professionals to provide care of the same quality to persons with disabilities as to others, including by raising awareness of their human rights, dignity, autonomy, and needs through training [2]. Korea has, through the Disability Act, a formal legal basis recommending that healthcare providers receive education to understand the health characteristics of persons with disabilities [15]. As confirmed in the five-country comparison, this is formally the most explicit legislative basis among the comparator nations. However, this legal recommendation has not been reflected in actual medical school curricula. Three structural factors may contribute to this disconnection. First, the educational provision of the Disability Act remains a “recommendation” and lacks legal enforceability. Second, there is an absence of a linkage mechanism between legislation and medical education accreditation standards. So long as ASK 2026 requires medical humanities curricula, without specifying disability education as content, there is no incentive for institutions to include it voluntarily. Third, the absence of a competency framework for disability education in Korea may leave educators without a reference point for educational content. Addressing all three may be necessary for institutionally effective disability education. The disconnection is therefore not only between domestic legislation and curricula: an obligation assumed under an international convention has not been translated into the education of the professionals to whom it applies.

The cross-national comparison indicated that this problem was not unique to Korea. All five comparator countries have disability-related legislation; however, none has directly linked it to medical school curricula or mandated disability education in medical curricula. This suggests that the institutionalization of disability education remains an unfinished task internationally. The United States possesses a comprehensive framework through the ADHCE Core Competencies (2019) [12], yet its effectiveness may be limited by the absence of formal linkage with LCME accreditation standards [8]. Australia has witnessed 20 years of repeated surveys by Trollor et al. [9, 29], serving as evidence for policy advocacy. The same group’s audit of Australian nursing curricula found a comparable pattern: fewer than half of the 31 participating schools offered any intellectual disability content, and only one involved a person with intellectual disability in delivering it [34]. The gap therefore does not appear to be confined to medical education. Japan, which shares structural similarities with Korea, lacks a national-level survey, suggesting that this topic has not been examined nationally in either country.

Synthesizing these comparisons, the institutionalization of disability education may require the sequential establishment of three conditions: development of a competency framework, its linkage with accreditation standards, and ongoing empirical monitoring. India illustrates what the first two conditions look like when they are met together. The Medical Council of India incorporated disability competencies as mandatory items in the Foundation Course of its 2019 competency-based curriculum, applied across all medical schools nationally [35]. These competencies were developed with the participation of physicians with disabilities and disability rights advocates [36], indicating that institutionalization is achievable when institutional will and the participation of persons with disabilities are combined.

Where disability content is absent from medical curricula, future physicians may enter practice without systematic exposure to disability-related communication, clinical environment adjustments, and disability-specific clinical considerations. These gaps can lead to unintentional communication failures, inadequate reasonable accommodations, and the medicalization of disability in clinical encounters. Conversely, integrating disability education into medical curricula has been associated with positive changes in students’ attitudes toward persons with disabilities [11]. Overall, disability education may be understood not only as a matter of individual provider competency but as a question bearing on the quality of care that persons with disabilities receive.

Hence, the following policy recommendations are proposed. First, the development of a disability competency framework appropriate to the Korean context would be an important step, reflecting Korea’s healthcare environment, legal system, and disability population characteristics, with guaranteed participation of persons with disabilities in the development process. Second, disability education-related items should be explicitly incorporated into KIMEE’s medical education accreditation standards. Third, an institutional mechanism linking the Disability Act’s recommendation clause with medical school curricula could help bridge this gap. The Ministry of Health and Welfare has previously indicated its intention to explore such measures [37], and the present findings document the gap that such measures would address. Fourth, ongoing monitoring through periodic surveys would help track change and build evidence for policy discussions.

Limitations and significance

This study has several limitations. First, the four-code framework and the disability-related keywords were developed for this study, and their application involved judgment. This applies particularly to Code C, where classification rested on inference from broad terms such as “consideration and diversity” or “socially vulnerable groups.” Although a conservative decision rule was applied, different raters might reach different conclusions in borderline cases. As described in the Methods, no measure of inter-rater agreement is available. Second, analysis was limited to the course title and description level, and syllabus-level verification was not performed. Some Code D institutions may include disability content in actual teaching, and borderline cases may be reclassified upon syllabus review. The scope of publicly available data varied across institutions, limiting the consistency of analysis. Third, the cross-national literature search was restricted to English-language records, and studies published only in a country’s national language may not have been identified. Fourth, as a descriptive study based on curriculum document analysis, this study did not assess teaching effectiveness or students’ disability understanding, nor did it examine provider competency or patient outcomes; the relationship between curricular content and clinical practice therefore remains to be established empirically.

Despite these limitations, this study is significant as the first national analysis of disability education curricula across all 40 Korean medical schools and graduate medical schools, documenting a curricular gap that had not been empirically confirmed. By comparing the findings with those of other countries, the study indicated that this problem was not unique to Korea while also identifying structural features specific to the Korean context. The findings serve as baseline data for subsequent policy discussions on competency framework development, accreditation standard improvement, and the establishment of a system for periodic surveys.

Conclusions

This study analyzed the current status of disability education curricula in Korean medical schools at the national level. No institution documented a standalone disability course in its publicly available curriculum, and disability-related content could be inferred in only five. The cross-national comparison indicated that the institutionalization of disability education remains an unfinished challenge internationally. Korea has a legal basis for healthcare provider education through the Disability Act [15]; however, a gap exists between this legal basis and what medical school curricula document.

These findings describe what institutions disclose, not what is taught. As a policy direction rather than a finding of this study, we suggest that linking legislation, accreditation standards, and curricula, together with a disability competency framework and ongoing monitoring, could support realizing the Disability Act’s educational purpose in medical education. Future research could address what this study could not: syllabus-level analysis of whether disability content is taught where curriculum documents do not record it, studies of learning outcomes, and extension to nursing and allied health curricula.

Abbreviations

ADA

Americans with Disabilities Act

ADHCE

Alliance for Disability in Health Care Education

AMC

Australian Medical Council

ASK 2026

Accreditation Standards of KIMEE 2026

CRPD

Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

DDA

Disability Discrimination Act

DMH

Doctoring and Medical Humanities

GMC

General Medical Council

ICF

International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health

KAMC

Korea Association of Medical Colleges

KIMEE

Korean Institute of Medical Education and Evaluation

LCME

Liaison Committee on Medical Education

MEXT

Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (Japan)

WHO

World Health Organization

Authors’ contributions

BL contributed to the study concept, study design, data collection, primary coding, data interpretation, and writing of the manuscript. SJC conceived the study, participated in the review of all classifications, contributed to data interpretation, and reviewed the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Funding

Not applicable.

Data availability

All data generated or analysed during this study are included in this article and its supplementary material. The source data are publicly available on the official websites of the 40 medical schools registered with the Korea Association of Medical Colleges (KAMC).

Declarations

Ethics approval and consent to participate

This study analyzed publicly available institutional documents and did not involve human participants. Ethics approval and informed consent were therefore not required.

Consent for publication

Not applicable.

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.