This article presents the authors' response to the invited commentaries on their paper (Wallace and Beange, 2008). On the point of "specialism", the authors emphasise a fundamental premise of their argument: the proposed "specialist" hospital-based service is inherently enmeshed within generic services at the hospital level,…

This commentary discusses whether a sufficient case has been made for specialism in hospital services as a viable alternative to existing generic services. The impact of developments in specialist care such as those outlined by Robyn A. Wallace and Helen Beange should be assessed as a means of reducing inequality. In particular, model services…

In this article, the author comments on the paper "On the need for a specialist service within the generic hospital setting" (Wallace & Beange, 2008), which raises critical issues regarding effective models of healthcare delivery for individuals with intellectual disability (ID), particularly within a hospital setting (but not…

Although the presence of intellectual disability (ID) per se is not usually regarded as a health problem, the biopsychosocial implications of cognitive impairment contribute to the vulnerability of adult patients with ID in any healthcare system. The adult patient with ID differs from a patient in the general population in terms of health…

Reports on linguistic features and patterns of coherence in mild and advanced levels of discourse of Alzheimer's patients. Argues and demonstrates that, as the disease progresses, patients' discourse becomes "pregrammatical"--vocabulary-driven and reliant on meaning-based discourse features rather than grammatically based features.…

The author addresses rehabilitation professionals in elaborating on 10 observations of the complexities surrounding the illness/disability experience and suggests that health care professionals (and systems) as well as patients (and families) recognize their own limitations and one another's strengths to enable families to live as fully as…

Medical scientists, doctors, and patients have different models of disease that cause doctor/patient communication problems. The patient model is reflected in the average American who is a high school graduate but who has little understanding of the human body and science. The model of the medical scientist is reflected in the typical graduate of…

Proposals have been developed to clarify physician responsibility in withholding treatment to terminally ill patients. These proposals seek to provide a legal shield against malpractice proceedings and to reduce confusion over how to resolve high medical costs through standardizing procedures for withholding treatment. When first published,…

Design of a modified senior clinical program for a University of Texas dental student with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is described. The modifications required identification of sufficient HIV-positive comprehensive-care patients, often outside the dental school clinic, to provide the student with a broad base of clinical experiences.…