Knowledge and perceived competence with sexual and gender minority healthcare topics among medical students and medical school faculty

Allison Rhodes; Zachary Barbati; David Tybor; Joshua St Louis

doi:10.1186/s12909-023-04849-2

Knowledge and perceived competence with sexual and gender minority healthcare topics among medical students and medical school faculty

BMC Med Educ. 2023 Dec 8;23(1):928. doi: 10.1186/s12909-023-04849-2.

Authors

Allison Rhodes^#¹, Zachary Barbati^#², David Tybor³, Joshua St Louis⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Psychiatry, Tufts Medical Center, Boston, MA, USA.
² Departments of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of California - San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA.
³ Department of Public Health and Community Medicine, Tufts University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, USA.
⁴ Department of Family Medicine, Tufts University School of Medicine, core faculty, Lawrence Family Medicine residency, Lawrence, MA, USA. Joshua.stlouis@glfhc.org.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Background: Despite changes in social attitudes in the United States over the last decade, sexual and gender minority (SGM) individuals continue to face significant health disparities, driven partly by disproportionately higher rates of self-reported discrimination and harassment when seeking healthcare. Historically, physicians have received little to no required training on how to provide sensitive, competent care to SGM patients, and continue to demonstrate poor competency with SGM topics despite calls for increased education and published guidelines to promote competency. The present study aimed to investigate competency with SGM topics among both faculty and medical students at one institution.

Methods: The authors distributed an anonymous online survey (2020-2021) to medical students and student-facing faculty at one allopathic medical school in the United States. The objective of the study was to evaluate knowledge, clinical skills, and self-reported competence with SGM topics.

Results: Of survey respondents, 223 medical students and 111 faculty were included in final analysis. On average, medical students were significantly more likely to answer General Knowledge questions correctly (97.2%) compared to faculty (89.9%). There were no significant differences in responses to Clinical Knowledge questions between medical students and faculty. however medical students were significantly more likely to report competence with eliciting a thorough sexual history, and faculty were significantly more likely to report receiving adequate clinical training and supervision to work with lesbian, gay, and bisexual patients.

Conclusions: Medical students demonstrated significantly higher general knowledge about SGM topics compared to faculty. Medical students and faculty demonstrated similarly low average clinical knowledge, with percent correct 65.6% for students and 62.7% for faculty. Despite significant differences in general knowledge and low clinical knowledge, medical students and faculty self-reported similar levels of competence with these topics. This indicates insufficient curricular preparation to achieve the AAMC competencies necessary to care for SGM patients.

Keywords: Caring for minority populations; Faculty development; LGBTQ; Medical school education; Perceived competence; Sexual and gender minority.

MeSH terms

Attitude of Health Personnel
Faculty, Medical
Female
Humans
Schools, Medical
Sexual and Gender Minorities*
Students, Medical*
United States