Your colleagues don't have to explain to every new attending why they need a chair. They don't have to disclose a medical history just to get through a shift. And when federal agencies start proposing rollbacks on accessibility in the buildings you work and treat patients in, the message lands on you differently than it lands on anyone else in the room.

Ashna Shome, a pediatrics resident in the Bronx with cerebral palsy, argues that disabled doctors aren't a rounding error in the system. They're the clearest read on where the system is breaking, and in 2026, under an administration she describes as actively ableist, that read is getting harder to ignore.

⏱️ Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
0:30 Why she became a doctor, and why she fights for it
1:19 The chair she has to justify to every new attending
2:09 The thin line between doctor and patient
2:54 The cuts this pediatrician is watching hit her patients
4:36 What immigrant families in the Bronx are losing
5:22 What anti-vax discourse is really saying about disabled kids
6:59 Why vaccine hesitancy has gotten worse every month
8:30 The source she trusts now that the CDC is political
8:54 The accessibility rule the federal government wants gone
10:06 Why she thinks unions are medicine's only future
13:43 Her advice for disabled people surviving 2026
14:58 Take home messages

About this episode:
Ashna Shome is a third-year pediatrics resident in the Bronx who also happens to have cerebral palsy, and she uses that dual vantage point to describe what the current policy climate actually feels like from inside a hospital. She walks through the quiet daily cost of being a visibly disabled physician, from disclosing her needs to every new attending just to sit down during rounds, to absorbing the message of a federal proposal that would drop physical access requirements for federally funded buildings. The conversation covers the on-the-ground effect of Medicaid and WIC cuts on the immigrant families she treats, why she believes the current anti-vax rhetoric is tacitly arguing that autism is worse than a child dying of measles, why she has shifted away from the CDC and toward the AAP as a trusted source for her families, and why she sees the Committee of Interns and Residents and the broader physician union movement as medicine's only viable future. She closes with blunt advice for disabled clinicians and patients trying to hold their ground in 2026: be loud, take up your space, and know who your people are.

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