Creating inclusive health care environments: Health care stories from the trans population.

BACKGROUND

Transgender people face a multitude of health care access barriers that create wide disparities in health. Transgender people have more untreated acute and chronic conditions than the cisgender population.

PURPOSE

The purpose of this study was to describe positive and negative experiences of transgender people when accessing health care.

METHODOLOGICAL ORIENTATION

Qualitative methods including semi-structured interviews and content analysis for identification of themes.

SAMPLE

Nine transgender people ranging in age from 20 to 35 years who currently reside in a metropolitan area of the Southwestern United States.

CONCLUSIONS

The interviews contained candid stories about the participants' health care experiences and included perspectives about provider knowledge, provider communication, and provider office interactions. Findings identified health care disparities among transgender people related, in part, to negative experiences in the health care environment. Some of these negative experiences arose from the uncertainty of providers' transgender-specific health care knowledge and anxiety about dysphoria-triggering communication in the health care environment.

IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE

These findings enhance practice by offering insight into how health care providers and personnel interactions influence the experience of transgender patients and help health care providers and personnel understand situations that create anxiety and dysphoria in transgender patients.