Delivering Culturally Sensitive Care to LGBTQI Patients

Abstract

Many health care providers are uncomfortable having conversations with patients about their sexual identity or sexual behaviors. Avoiding this discomfort is causing a serious threat to the mental and physical health of Americans, particularly those in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning, or intersex (LGBTQI) community. The health-related disparities among LGBTQI patients range from bullying and physical assault to refusal of health care and housing. Many individuals choose not to seek health care due of fear of being judged, marginalized, or abused. This article focuses on the many disparities faced by the LGBTQI community and describes how simple changes in the practices of health care providers can potentially improve their health outcomes.

Families in Transition: The Lived Experience of Parenting a Transgender Child

“…The education of nurses related to the unique health needs of this population is vital for providing best practice and holistic care (ANA, 2018). Several recent studies (Cicero & Wesp, 2017; Kirkpatrick et al, 2015; Landry, 2017; McCann & Brown, 2019; Nicol et al, 2013) highlight the necessity for nursing education programs to include and enhance LGBTQ content in their curricula because many health care providers who were interviewed lacked the knowledge and skills to provide competent, culturally sensitive care to this population. Identification of strategies to raise nurses’ competency in addressing the needs of transgender individuals and their families is imperative for better quality of life.…”

“…Pinkerton (2016) interviewed Katy Tierney, a nurse practitioner working with transgender individuals, who commented that “Gender is a common lived experience for all of us and an essential part of how we operate in our worlds” (p. 21). For the purpose of this study, a person in transition is defined as “a person whose biologic anatomy does not correspond with their sexual identity and many have a desire to outwardly express the gender to which they identify” (Landry, 2017, p. 345). To express self-identified gender, a person may pursue nonmedical actions such as name change, pronoun usage, and appearance alteration or they may seek out physical and/or physiological alteration through hormones or reconstructive surgery.…”

“…Discrimination may be associated with prejudice on the part of the nurse due to a lack of knowledge regarding sexual orientation, expression, and/or gender identity. If transgender patients perceive they do not fit into a heteronormative culture, they may encounter bias, which results in lack of seeking health care treatment (Landry, 2017).…”

Evaluation of Transgender Healthcare in Medical School Curriculum: A Dual-Campus Study

“…This may be due to students' pre-formed biases and understandings, or lack thereof, about gender identity, or due to the content in the lecture itself. Regardless, the National LGBT Health Education Center: Fenway Institute has suggested that it is important for healthcare providers to understand gender uidity to develop a comprehensive assessment of the health needs of each patient 30 . To improve this outcome, it would be bene cial to develop another lecture with clear de nitions of gender uidity and clinical reasonings for how it would bene t patients to be knowledgeable in this area.…”

Queering medical education: systematically assessing LGBTQI health competency and implementing reform

“…Such a gap in medical school training has left some physicians ill equipped to meet the needs of their LGBTQI patients. In some instances, lack of medical training, along with bias, has led LGBTQI patients to fear abuse in healthcare settings [6,7]. Such abuse is echoed by LGBTQI identified medical students, almost half of which report witnessing ‘anti-LGBT jokes, rumors, and/or bullying by fellow medical students and/or other members of the healthcare team’ [8].…”