They wanted to treat a hormonal imbalance and ovarian cyst problem I have by dosing me with estrogen, which would have made my breasts enlarge and would have ruined the quasi-masculine physique I have, which is one of the things I love most about myself. He had his own ideas about what my so-called lifestyle was because I'm gay, and imposed those prejudices on me as he spoke to me, ignoring the problem I'd gone there to address.Ģ) I'm also gender-variant. So, why does a doctor need to know about my different health needs? Because:ġ) I'm not having kids, and it was insulting and offensive to go to a doctor (someone in whom I'm supposed to place my trust for my health) who wanted to treat me like I was nothing but a breeding machine that hadn't found its purpose.
I drink only in moderation, don't use tobacco, exercise 5 time per week, and engage in outdoor activities. I'm married and monogamous with a person who has NO STD's and doesn't use drugs. I have an extremely low-risk "lifestyle." I'm drug-free and disease-free. “Is this an institution that is itself welcoming of a diverse group of students, patients, and staff? Because I think when you have that, if you're working in an environment that is itself a welcoming culture, the topics come up naturally.” “And even if you could more adequately assess what's going on in curriculum, even then, what's perhaps more important is the environment in which this education takes place” says Curry, who wrote an editorial about the study for JAMA.
Raymond Curry, Vice Dean for Education at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. It's difficult to determine how much of the relevant information on LGBT-issues is threaded into other lectures and discussions, says Dr. Researchers assessed time spent explicitly on 16 different LGBT topics including sexual orientation, gender identity, mental health issues, LGBT adolescents, and coming out, but did not assess knowledge, attitudes, or skills directly. The study on LGBT medical curricula has its limitations.
In addition to persistent social stigma, there are structural barriers to health care access among the LGBT community, such as partners not qualifying for employer-sponsored health care coverage.Īn Institute of Medicine report cites that 57% percent of Fortune 500 companies extend benefits to domestic partners of LGB employees, with far fewer smaller companies doing the same. Higher rates of anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts, smoking, alcohol consumption, substance use, youth homelessness, harassment, sexually transmitted infections, and HIV/AIDS all affect the LGBT community, studies show. Past studies have documented enormous health disparities between the LGBT community and non-transgendered, heterosexual peers. Leslie Stewart, one of the study authors. "So that kind of said to us that there's some awareness that there could be better LGBT-related curriculum," says Dr. Perhaps most surprising: 70% of responding schools evaluated their own LBGT curricula as ‘fair’, ‘poor’, or ‘very poor.’ and Canada, and 85% of schools responded.Īcross all medical schools that participated, the median time spent on LGBT-related content was just five hours, though time spent varied widely by school. Surveys used in the study were distributed to all 176 allopathic (conventional) and osteopathic medical schools in the U.S. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender patients present unique challenges to treating physicians, but their specific needs may not be getting enough attention in some medical schools.Ĥ4 medical schools reported dedicating no teaching time to LGBT-related content during clinical years, and in preclinical curricula, nine medical schools reported spending no time on LGBT issues, according to a study published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.