Developing LGBTQ Education for Healthcare Providers: 5 Best Practices
The LGBTQ community experiences many unique healthcare challenges, often facing acts of discrimination that make it difficult to receive equitable and safe care. As a facility leader, providing LGBTQ education for healthcare providers is an essential step toward minimizing barriers for this vulnerable patient population.
If you’re looking to provide better LGBTQ education and resources for your staff, you may be wondering where to start. In this article, we’ll go over the importance of LGBTQ education in healthcare and outline five best practices for implementing training at your facility.
What Is SOGI Training for Healthcare Workers?
Sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) training, commonly referred to as LGBTQ training, is education offered by healthcare organizations to their clinicians and administrators. These courses are used to help employees compassionately care and advocate for members of the LGTBQ community. While not every SOGI program is exactly the same, most courses aim to:
- Aid administrators in developing a warm and welcoming care environment for members of the LGBTQ community.
- Help clinicians identify and address health disparities that exist among LGBTQ patients.
- Educate providers on how to compassionately and professionally communicate with members of the LGBTQ community.
Why Is There a Need for LGBTQ Education for Healthcare Providers?
An estimated 7 out of 10 LGBTQ individuals report having negative healthcare experiences, ranging from the outright denial of care to various forms of harassment and humiliation. Ultimately, this also leads to worsened health outcomes and makes LGBTQ individuals less likely to seek care.
The ongoing stigma that the LGBTQ community faces is caused by a number of factors — one of which is a lack of proper LGBTQ education in the healthcare space. In a survey sent out to all accredited nursing schools, nearly two-thirds of respondents indicated that their graduates were not prepared to care for LGBTQ populations.
Every individual deserves access to the healthcare that they need. In order to cultivate a more inclusive and safe environment for these patients, facility leaders play a critical role in providing LGBTQ health education resources for their staff.
How Does LGBTQ Education for Healthcare Provders Help Patients?
Healthcare organizations that focus on providing culturally competent care can improve the health outcomes of the LGBTQ patients they serve. Additionally, culturally competent organizations who offer SOGI employee training can:
- Lower rates of moral distress and burnout among healthcare providers.
- Increase LGBTQ patient engagement.
- Improve their brand image.
- Increase patient satisfaction scores.
- Strengthen trust among patients, clinicians, and healthcare administrators.
LGBTQ Education for Healthcare Providers: 5 Best Practices
Now that you understand the importance of developing more inclusive care environments, you may be asking yourself — what are best practices for health care practitioners who engage with LGBTQ patients? The following best practices can help you provide LGBTQ healthcare training in a way that is helpful and meaningful for your patients and staff.
1. Encourage the Completion of Comprehensive Training Courses
LGBTQ education requires ongoing learning of care standards and the unlearning of harmful stereotypes. It’s important to mandate baseline training and provide access to continuing education designed for providers of all levels.
Training should cover a wide range of topics including, but not limited to, sexual orientation and gender identity, reducing health disparities, and respectful communication. You can start by requiring or offering credits for continuing education programs on LGBTQ health. Care providers looking for additional learning opportunities can consider enrolling in the following recommended courses:
- American Medical Association’s course on LGBTQ Health, Diversity & Inclusion
- LGBT Foundation’s Pride in Practice LGBTQ sensitivity training for healthcare workers
- National LGBTQIA+ Health Education Center’s CME/CEU courses
- National Coalition for LGBTQ Health’s LGBTQ Training Certification
2. Train Staff on Inclusive Communication
Poor communication is a common reason why LGBTQ patients often have negative experiences with healthcare providers. Thus, providing fundamental training on how to communicate with LGBTQ patients is necessary to build a better care environment.
It’s important to stay up to date on preferred terminology and ensure that your staff are not using outdated terms that may be offensive to LGBTQ patients. The National LGBTQIA+ Health Education Center regularly updates an online glossary of terms. This can be a helpful resource that your providers can revisit to learn more inclusive language.
There are also many ways that staff can incorporate inclusive language in their everyday work. For example, staff should be encouraged to respectfully ask each patient about their preferred pronouns (and share their own, if comfortable) to avoid making assumptions that can harm transgender and gender nonbinary patients.
3. Promote Cultural Competence in the Care of LGBTQ Patients
LGBTQ education is an important part of building cultural competence. However, while several states mandate cultural competence training for healthcare providers, Washington, D.C. is the only jurisdiction that requires it within the context of LGBTQ health.
As a facility leader, you can help break down barriers by ensuring that your routine cultural competence training includes LGBTQ health topics. Here are a few organizations that offer cultural competency training on LGBTQ populations:
4. Enforce Clinical Guidelines From Vetted Sources
It’s also important to enforce LGBTQ-specific clinical guidelines that are updated and reflective of the community’s needs. Ensure that these resources are from vetted, evidence-based organizations and make your staff aware of them. Several toolkits and guidelines can enhance LGBTQ education for healthcare providers, including:
- The UCSF guidelines for the primary and gender-affirming care of transgender and gender nonbinary people.
- The Endocrine Society’s clinical guidelines for endocrine treatment of gender-dysphoric or gender-incongruent persons.
- The CDC’s guidelines on providing care for gay and bisexual men.
- National LGBTQIA+ Health Education Center’s toolkit archive.
- Harvard’s library of LGBTQ health practice guidelines.
5. Implement Workflow Processes That Support Your Education
When it comes to improving LGBTQ healthcare, organizations must also ensure that workflow processes support the best practices of LGBTQ education. For example, is your patient intake form inclusive of all genders and pronouns? Does your EHR system include fields enabling sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) data collection? These are a few common (yet often overlooked) ways that LGBTQ patients can be more welcomed in the healthcare space.
Discover More Ways to Build Inclusivity
Providing LGBTQ education for healthcare providers is one of many ways to foster inclusivity and improve patient outcomes. Looking for additional insights? Our clinical experts have developed hundreds of healthcare, tips, resources, and guides to help you provide fair and equitable care.