School of Environment and Technology, University of Brighton, Brighton, UK.
Geography Department, Maynooth University, Maynooth, Ireland.
Cult Health Sex. 2020 Aug;22(8):954-970. doi: 10.1080/13691058.2019.1643499. Epub 2019 Aug 20.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex (LGBTI) people experience significant healthcare inequalities and barriers to healthcare services. Contextualised within six Member States of the European Union (EU), this paper discusses efforts to identify and explore the nature of barriers to healthcare as part of Health4LGBTI, a 2-year pilot project funded by the EU. Data were generated through focus groups and interviews with LGBTI people and healthcare professionals and analysed using thematic analysis. Findings reveal that barriers to healthcare are underpinned by two related assumptions held by healthcare professionals: first, the assumption that patients are heterosexual, cisgender and non-intersex by default; second, the assumption that LGBTI people do not experience significant problems (and therefore that their experience is mostly irrelevant to healthcare). On the other hand, it is notable that responding healthcare professionals were broadly 'LGBTI-friendly'. Thus, we argue that efforts to improve LGBTI healthcare should not be limited to engaging with healthcare professionals with negative views of LGBTI people. Rather, such efforts should also tackle these assumptions amongst LGBTI-friendly healthcare professionals.
女同性恋、男同性恋、双性恋、跨性别和间性（LGBTI）人群在获得医疗保健方面存在着显著的不平等和障碍。本文以欧盟六个成员国为背景，讨论了作为欧盟资助的为期两年试点项目 Health4LGBTI 的一部分，努力确定和探索医疗保健障碍的性质。数据是通过对 LGBTI 人群和医疗保健专业人员的焦点小组和访谈产生的，并使用主题分析进行了分析。研究结果表明，医疗保健障碍的基础是医疗保健专业人员持有的两个相关假设：首先，默认情况下，患者是异性恋、顺性别和非间性别的；其次，假设 LGBTI 人群不会遇到重大问题（因此，他们的经历与医疗保健关系不大）。另一方面，值得注意的是，反应积极的医疗保健专业人员普遍对 LGBTI 群体持友好态度。因此，我们认为，改善 LGBTI 医疗保健的努力不应仅限于与对 LGBTI 群体持负面看法的医疗保健专业人员接触。相反，此类努力还应解决这些在对 LGBTI 群体友好的医疗保健专业人员中存在的假设。
