Introducing Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) and Gender Identity Issues in a Medical Humanities Module

Educational Initiatives To Introduce Medical Students To Lgbt Issues

Recently there have been many initiatives to introduce medical students to issues faced by the LGBT community. A study conducted at a metropolitan medical school in the United States (US) showed that medical students with greater exposure to LGBT patients had better knowledge and more positive attitudes towards this population compared to students with little or no clinical exposure (Sanchez et al., 2006). At the University of California, San Francisco a LGBT curriculum was implemented and the authors concluded that their small curricular intervention had resulted in significant short-term increase in student knowledge as measured by a survey (Kelley et al., 2008). A study conducted among both nursing students and medical students at a university in Australia concluded that respondents’ knowledge and attitude about homosexuality showed a significant association with race, political voting behavior, religious beliefs and having a LGBT friend who had declared their orientation openly (Chapman et al., 2012). A study conducted at the University of Cape Town in South Africa aimed to determine the extent to which LGBT related health content is taught in the curriculum (Muller, 2013). The author concluded that LGBT issues were not adequately covered in the curriculum and teaching where it existed was largely discretionary, unsystematic and not incorporated into the overarching curricular structure. A study conducted among both allopathic and osteopathic medical schools in the US and Canada aimed to characterize LGBT content in the school curricula (Obedin-Maliver et al, 2011.). The median time devoted to teaching LGBT content was 5 hours and the quantity, content covered and the perceived quality of the information varied substantially among schools.

A recent paper acknowledges that understanding a patient’s sexual orientation is important; however, the time afforded and the richness of discussions on this topic varies significantly across North American medical schools (Shindel & Parish, 2013). The authors conclude that there is a tremendous opportunity to mold views of the next generation of healthcare providers regarding human sexuality and they recommend a comprehensive and uniform curriculum on human sexuality. At the Tulane University School of Medicine in New Orleans, four educational sessions related to LGBT issues were offered to undergraduate medical students (Sequeira et al., 2012). Following the sessions students completed electronic feedback forms. Thematic analysis of student responses identified a current lack of exposure to LGBT content, a consensus that LGBT issues are important in the students’ work as future physicians and the relevance of including such issues in the school curriculum. Previous research has suggested that medical students, doctors and other healthcare professionals may have negative attitudes towards LGBT patients and colleagues (McKelvey et al., 1999; Eliason et al., 2011). At the Leicester-Warwick medical school in the United Kingdom, human sexuality is included in the curriculum in the context of a module on human diversity (Dixon-Woods et al., 2002). The course uses a mixture of teaching methods and the authors concluded the course was effective in reducing students’ anxieties about human sexuality and their confidence in developing appropriate skills.