1 School of Medicine, University of California , San Francisco, San Francisco, California.
2 Department of Family and Community Medicine, Center of Excellence for Transgender Health, University of California , San Francisco, San Francisco, California.
LGBT Health. 2017 Feb;4(1):55-61. doi: 10.1089/lgbt.2016.0119. Epub 2017 Jan 11.
Being transgender is associated with numerous health disparities, and transgender individuals face mistreatment and discrimination in healthcare settings. At the same time, healthcare professionals report inadequate preparation to care for transgender people, and patients often have to teach their own medical providers about transgender care. Our study aimed to evaluate the impact of an elective course for health profession students in transgender health that was implemented to address these gaps in provider knowledge.
Students participated in a 10-session, lunch-hour elective course during the spring of 2015. To evaluate impact, course participants completed pre-, immediately post-, and 3-month postcourse questionnaires, including a previously validated nine-item transphobia scale, to determine the course's effect on knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs about transgender health.
Forty-six students completed the pre- and immediately postelective questionnaire (74% response rate). Compared with pre-elective surveys, immediately postelective scores demonstrated increased knowledge in most domains and reduced transphobia. Specific knowledge domains with improvements included terminology, best practices for collecting gender identity, awareness of the DSM-V gender dysphoria diagnosis, medications used for gender affirmation, and relevant federal policies. A previously validated transphobia scale was found to have good reliability in the current sample.
This elective course led to positive short-term changes in measures of multiple knowledge domains and reduced measures of transphobia among health profession students. Further study is needed to assess the long-term impact. Our methods and findings, including the demonstration of reliability of a previously validated nine-item transphobia scale, serve as formative data for the future development of theory-based transgender medicine curricula and measures.
跨性别与许多健康差异有关，跨性别者在医疗保健环境中会遭受虐待和歧视。与此同时，医疗保健专业人员报告称，他们准备不足，无法为跨性别者提供护理，而患者通常不得不向自己的医疗服务提供者教授跨性别护理知识。我们的研究旨在评估为解决医疗服务提供者知识差距而实施的跨性别健康选修课程对健康专业学生的影响。
学生们在 2015 年春季参加了为期 10 节、午餐时间的选修课程。为了评估影响，课程参与者在课前、课后即刻和课后 3 个月完成了问卷，其中包括之前验证过的九项跨性别恐惧症量表，以确定该课程对跨性别健康的知识、态度和信念的影响。
46 名学生完成了课前和课后即刻的问卷调查（74%的回应率）。与课前调查相比，课后即刻的评分显示出在大多数领域的知识增加，跨性别恐惧症减少。具有改进的特定知识领域包括术语、收集性别认同的最佳实践、对 DSM-V 性别焦虑症诊断的认识、用于性别肯定的药物以及相关的联邦政策。之前验证过的跨性别恐惧症量表在当前样本中具有良好的可靠性。
该选修课程导致健康专业学生在多个知识领域的短期测量结果出现积极变化，并减少了跨性别恐惧症的测量结果。需要进一步研究以评估长期影响。我们的方法和发现，包括对之前验证过的九项跨性别恐惧症量表的可靠性的证明，为未来基于理论的跨性别医学课程和措施的发展提供了形成性数据。
