Experiences of students with chronic illness in university education in Ireland, 2024, Doris & Morrissey

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https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/17423953241282246

Doris O, Morrissey EC. Experiences of students with chronic illness in university education in Ireland. Chronic Illness. 2024;0(0). doi:10.1177/17423953241282246

One of the participants has ME/CFS.

Abstract

Objective
The aim of this study was to explore the experiences of university students with a chronic illness in Ireland. The study also aimed to gain insight into students’ experiences with Disability Support Services (DSS) and identify gaps where additional supports and resources are needed.

Design
Cross-sectional qualitative study.

Methods
Fourteen students from three Irish universities participated in semi-structured interviews. The interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed, and analysed through the six-step process of reflexive thematic analysis.

Results
Four themes were developed: (1) The burden of managing a chronic illness alongside university education; (2) Interruptions, disruptions and alterations to college life; (3) Flexible supports for fluctuating conditions; (4) Achieving in educating while living with a chronic illness.

Conclusions
Participants reported a physical and emotional burden. Despite engaging in rigorous management strategies, many participants missed lectures and socialising with peers. Some found the supports from DSS to be useful, however many were unsure if they qualified for support, or found the supports available to be generic and inadequate for their needs. There is significant scope for the delivery of both teaching and DSS to be improved for this cohort, ensuring that all students, regardless of their health status, have equal opportunities for success.


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I couldn't see an education forum/subforum on a quick search

 

That's just fantasy. There is no adaptation to education that can do that. Not without effective treatments. There is some level of adaptation that can be of help to some, about the lowest possible standard, but it begins and ends with medicine by simply removing the problem entirely, removing any and all measures necessary to adapt to it.

Otherwise you end up with a similar situation as the famous snakes policy in India, where the government paid people who brought them dead snakes in order to control the population, only to see an actual industry of snake farms as a regular source of income, then when the policy ended they were all released, ending up with more snakes and a lot of money spent to get there. We don't want this moocher side industry, we need the problem fixed at its source.

I'll also say that I'm really over seeing those thematic narratives. They're always from the perspective of the researchers, making them pointless. It's all perception management. Illness causing disability doesn't need thematic narratives, the impacts are pretty much all generic and there is no need for any of this. In the end it's just publishing papers for the sake of publishing papers. There is no further purpose here. This whole system is as dysfunctional as any system could ever be.

 

It's really the themes I have issues with. They never interview enough people to merit this and basically amount to editorialization when they try to force them into boxes. And all it takes is the slightest bias in selection to create a wildly misleading picture out of it. Which is more often than not the case.