Abstract

Student teaching has tended to position heterosexuality and gender normativity — people conforming to social standards of what is ‘appropriate’ feminine and masculine behavior — as the primary context in which health and illness is viewed. Models of health care that promote these views of sexuality and gender identity over others can create an environment in which gender stereotypes and heteronormativity — the cultural bias in favor of opposite-sex over same-sex sexual relationships — result in lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people becoming ‘add ins’ (Hicks & Watson, 2003), if and when they are considered. Even the term LGBT on the rare occasions it figures assumes that Ts have co-extensive healthcare issues as with the Ls, Gs, and Bs, and can be taught together as an extension of the same theme. It is important to respond to the requirements of L, G, B, and T populations accessing health care with different models, not in the form of mainstream tolerance, but, I argue, by changing pedagogical institutions in lasting ways. However, I wish to post a caveat here: education must not inadvertently pathologize LGBT communities by situating associated medical, health and social care curricula as purely LGBT issues. However, LGBT pedagogy must show that health inequities do affect LGBT communities in complex ways (Davy & Siriwardena, 2012). As such, this research explores barriers and facilitators of providing LGBT curricula for medical, health and social care students in a bid to help ‘mainstream’ LGBT individuals as equal health citizens. I will start by assessing the accreditation policies and grassroots initiatives taking place then move on to what the literature says about what is actually happening on the ground with medical, health and social care students and in the curriculum. I will finish by providing some potential facilitators of LGBT curricula and extra curricula content that may prove useful to medical, health and social care students, which can be incorporated into their professional practice.