Episode 80, Part 1. Drs. Neera Jain and Peter Poullos

Interviewee: Dr. Pete Poullos

Description: In this special 2 part series, Dr. Neera Jain interviews friend and colleague Dr. Peter Poullos on his experiences as a person with a disability. Dr. Poullos candidly reflects on his journey coming into a disability identity and how learning from a vibrant community of diverse individuals has elevated his thinking about disability justice. He shares insight into the power of community and how transformational it has been in forming the disability resource group at Stanford Medicine. Throughout the interview, Drs Jain and Poullos discuss their shared experiences and their roles as advocates for individuals with disabilities in medicine.

Bio: Dr. Poullos is from Stockton, California. He attended Santa Clara University, then received his M.D. degree at the University of Texas Medical School at Houston, after which he did an Internal Medicine residency at the University of California-San Francisco, finishing in 2002. He stayed at UCSF as a Gastroenterology fellow but, after a spinal cord injury, he decided to retrain in Radiology. He did his Radiology residency at Stanford University, where he also completed a fellowship In Body Imaging in 2009. Dr. Poullos is now faculty in both the departments of Radiology and Gastroenterology and Hepatology.  

In 2018, Dr. Poullos founded the Stanford Medicine Abilities Coalition (SMAC), which he serves as Executive Director. In that role, Dr. Poullos advocates for students and healthcare providers with disabilities, as well as for health equity for disabled patients. He is a faculty advisor to the Medical Students with Disability and Chronic Illness (MSDCI). He has paired up with Dr. Lisa Meeks to co-produce the DocsWithDisabilities podcast to increase awareness around the importance of increasing disability representation amongst students and practitioners in healthcare. “Disability is not a problem to solve, it is the solution to our problems.”

Transcript

Produced by: Kadesha Treco and Lisa Meeks 

Audio editor: Jacob Feeman

Digital Media: Katie Sullivan

Keywords: disability, doctors with disabilities, accessibility, med ed, disability identity, radiology, SCI, Spinal Chord Injury. ableism, internalized ableism 

DWDI Podcast Website: https://www.docswithdisabilities.org/podcast  

References

Stergiopoulos, E., Fernando, O., & Martimianakis, M. A. (2018). “Being on both sides”: Canadian medical students’ experiences with disability, the hidden curriculum, and professional identity construction. Academic Medicine, 93(10), 1550-1559.

Resources:

Dr. Jain’s article "Political disclosure: resisting ableism in medical education"