Chapel Haven Schleifer Center’s innovative partnership with the Yale School of Medicine is helping train future doctors to provide optimum care for individuals with disabilities.
A recent profile in Yale Medicine Magazine, Spring 2025 details how Yale School of Medicine students come to the CHSC campus every spring. As part of the enhanced Clinical Skills course, YSM students now visit residents of Chapel Haven Schleifer Center, taking a campus tour and meeting one-on-one with adults in the REACH, ASAT and community programs. The CHSC students enjoy the chance to talk with doctors in training about wide ranging topics, from health to employment to weekend social plans.
“All of our medical students now spend an afternoon as a guest of one of the people living at Chapel Haven,” says Jaideep Talwalkar, MD, associate professor of medicine (general medicine) and pediatrics, and associate dean for education technology and innovation, medical education. “Students are surprised at the strengths of the people they meet there. They see the residents of Chapel Haven bringing a lot to their community. They are able to hold the ear of a group of medical students all afternoon, teaching them how they live and who they are.”
The impetus for the Chapel Haven initiative came from medical student Harry Doernberg, now in his fourth year, who had prior experience working with people with intellectual disabilities. Early in his time at YSM, Doernberg noticed that many of his fellow students had questions about delivering care to people with intellectual disabilities: What kind of accommodations do you need to make in physical access to clinical settings, and in communication? What are the patients’ living situations? Who coordinates care inside and outside the clinic?
“There was space in the curriculum to expand the teaching on the diverse types of patients we care for,” says Doernberg. “At the start of medical school, you are taught to ask very open-ended questions and perform the physical exam in a standard way. For people with intellectual disabilities, it’s important to recognize when adjustments to that approach might be necessary—using closed-ended, yes-or-no, plain-language questions; seeking shorter answers; allowing for extra processing time; and collecting corroborating information from third parties only when required—or even letting patients direct portions of the interview and physical exam themselves.”
Gina Apicella, Senior Vice President, Clinical Services at CHSC, was instrumental in designing the yearly visits.
Read the article here
