Abstract

Recent research has demonstrated that MHSC teachers often do not have the time, skills or inclination to provide an extensive focus on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender health issues (Davy, 2012, 2013). Not surprisingly bisexuality and transgender are erased from the curriculum more often than lesbian and gay issues. Other research has drawn attention to the fact that medical curricula inadequately address relevant health care issues, such as transitioning, barriers to care, chronic disease risk and so on (Obedin-Maliver et al., 2011), and stereotype transpeople with minimum reflection on the damage that this may cause in health care settings. As a result, the response of the health care system to the needs of these patient groups (and employees) has been minimal. Medical students receive much less education about trans* issues than those students on courses with a more social science approaches to health and illness (Davy, 2012). In spite of accreditation policies for many of the courses stipulating that ‘diverse communities’ must be represented in the curriculum, education about trans* issues is dependent upon various practical factors. Whilst this is problematic, it is unhelpful to criticize the erasures without at least providing some potential solutions to the problem of including trans* inclusive teaching in the curriculum. This workshop will explore, what, where, when, how and why trans* inclusive curricula could/should be taught to MHSC students, providing the data to test out in educational settings through action research. Evaluation of the interventions’ pedagogical merits will be redistributed to the workshop group at a later stage for comments and any improvements to be made.

References
Davy, Z. (2012). Facillitating LGBT Medical, Health and Social Care Education in Higher Education. Paper presented at the Medical Education Research Development, University of Leeds.
Davy, Z. (2013). Changing healthcare practitioners’ and teachers’ views about Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Medical, Health and Social Care. Paper presented at the European Sociological Association, Universita Delgli Studi di Torino.
Obedin-Maliver, J., Goldsmith, E. S., Stewart, L., White, W., Tran, E., Brenman, S., . . . Lunn, M. R. (2011). Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender–Related Content in Undergraduate Medical Education. JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association, 306(9), 971-977.