Vanessa Cameron, MSN, RN, NPD-BC, a nurse planner in Nursing Education and Professional Development (NEPD), has long been passionate about improving equity in health care, becoming part of a small group of nurses who started work in 2019 to update a new standard for Respectful and Equitable Practice for the Association for Nursing Professional Development.
But equity through accessibility became personal for her when she fell while rock climbing in 2021, injured her spinal cord and became paraplegic.
Four months after her accident, Cameron returned to work at a hospital in Washington as a full-time wheelchair user and encountered a very different world.
“I just didn’t understand, and I didn’t realize before how physically and socially inaccessible a lot of spaces are,” she said. “I thought I understood what ableism was, and I was wrong. Living that is very different from learning about it or trying to think about it when you also don’t have a lot of examples in front of you.”
Now Cameron is leading a team that developed a web-based Creating Inclusive Learning Algorithm tool to support more inclusive learning spaces, including better accessibility to educational events for people with disabilities.
The tool, which is now live, focuses on both physical and technological environments through a series of questions, to which someone may answer yes, no or unsure. For example, if someone is developing an in-person nursing education event, it guides them through steps to provide accessibility, such as to people who use wheelchairs.
On the technological side, it educates them on items such as font colors and sizes to be accessible for people with visual disabilities or dyslexia — items people may not consider when developing presentations. For all events, considerations such as providing varied perspectives, improving relatability and engagement, and reviewing planned breaks will be assessed.
Cameron, who co-leads the VUMC Disability Employee Resource Group, said the tool is intended for anyone who supports existing educational events or is creating an event with a goal of supporting all participants with their varied backgrounds and perspectives.
“I don’t think we directly call out anyone in the tool,” Cameron said. “We tried to keep it much more positive — here are some ideas that you can use to make this educational event more inclusive.”
Cameron and her NEPD colleagues were recently approved by the IRB to study if using the tool changes people’s awareness and understanding of inclusive learning, and if behavioral changes happen. The team is openly recruiting participants to use the tool and be part of the study at this link: https://redcap.vumc.org/surveys/?s=Y7MT8PDRC3AEHWHT
“As the senior director of NEPD, I am pleased that our VUMC NEPD team has developed a tool that advocates for inclusivity in the learning environment,” said Crystal Jackson, MSN, RN, NPD-BC.
Anyone at VUMC or Vanderbilt University is welcome to participate in the study. “They can be nurses or program managers or physicians … anyone who is going to hold an educational event,” Cameron said.
The goal of the algorithmic tool is to inform the end user to take a proactive approach to inclusion for all learners. That way, people with disabilities don’t have to ask for accessibility and accommodations, people from varied racial, ethnic and gender identities are represented, and a focus on social determinants/drivers of health can be present. Cameron noted that she identifies as a disabled person and her disability is very visual; she is in a wheelchair. But many people with “invisible disabilities” or minority groups may not ask for something because they don’t want to identify their disability or minority status.
For example, Cameron said instead of waiting for someone to ask to turn on closed captions, presenters could just turn them on all the time, by default. Little by little, this inclusive learning tool could build a more inclusive environment in health care, including for people with disabilities.
“My disability made me better at my job,” Cameron said. “All the nurses that I was teaching and the people I had built these relationships with, so many of them afterwards said, ‘I will treat people differently now because of what you’ve told me.’ And that in itself is the biggest compliment that someone who is trying to make health care better could ask for.”
