Medical student seek better bedside manners

An article on Medical News Today is tackling a subject few people have taken notice of: the importance of being out at the doctor’s office.
The article describes how lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender patients often question whether they should tell their doctors about their sexual preference when they meet a doctor for the first time, fearing homophobia and insensitivity on the part of their heterosexual physician.
A group of four Stanford medical students recently organized their own on-campus research group, called the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, & Transgender Medical Education Research Group. The group plans to survey the deans of medical education at several schools in United States and Canada to determine what is being taught. Thereafter, the group plans to forward recommendations toward improvements. The survey questions, which will be sent out this spring, will include: "When learning how to conduct a sexual history, are students at your institution taught to obtain information about same-sex relations, e.g. asking 'do you have sex with men, women, or both?” and "Is there a clinical clerkship site that is specifically designed to facilitate LGBT patient care?" The survey also provides a glossary of terms such as, "Sex reassignment surgery: the genital alteration surgery that transgender individuals sometimes undergo.

A similar survey will next be sent out to all medical students. The four students - Elizabeth Goldsmith, Leslie Stewart, Juno Obedin-Maliver and Lunn - decided to form their research group after attending the 25th annual conference of the Gay & Lesbian Medical Association, or GLMA, in 2007 and learning of the lack of research regarding LGBT content in medical schools on a national level. The four received a small grant from Stanford to help launch their study.
The knowledge shortage might explain health disparities, such as increased risk factors for breast cancer among lesbians, higher rates of depression and anxiety due to homophobia that plague the LGBT community.

Kudos to these fantastic four, whose effort may help combat the ignorance in the medical profession and improve access to appropriate healthcare for a poorly served community, nationwide.

Details: http://med.stanford.edu/lgbt or http://mednews.stanford.edu.