How to care for your LGBTIQ patient? – Brazil (IFMSA-Brazil)

Name of the activity: How to care for your LGBTIQ patient?

Country/NMO: Brazil (IFMSA-Brazil)

Program: Sexuality & Gender Identity

Contact information: [email protected]

Type of the activity: Education

General description:

The acronym LGBTIQ means lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer which consist of different types of sexual orientation. It is also used to describe a movement that fights for the rights of homosexuals and, especially, against homophobia.
Because of this discrimination and prejudice, talking about the LGBTIQ community, especially with regard to the sexuality of this population, has become a taboo. This is an issue especially uncomfortable and underdiscussed for health professionals, because it is a topic worked just within only a few universities and, consequently, the knowledge of how to approach this subject correctly people becomes insufficient. The event was set at the University of Caxias do Sul on June 5th, 2017, from 6:30pm to 10pm, it was entitled “How to take a good care of your LGBTIQ patient” and addressed issues related to difficulties that health professionals presented when dealing with members of this community. Two professionals were invited to talk, a psychologist and a sexologist, and to make up the panel discussion at the end of the event we had a social worker, a transsexual, a LGBTIQ psychologist and the vice president of an NGO of militant LGBTIQ. Through this activity, we seeked to promote a more humanized service for the LGBTIQ population, which we believe we have been able to achieve through lectures and debates.

Focus area:

LGBTIQ+ issues

Problem statement:

Unfortunately, today, in Brazil, the members of the LGBTIQ community are often victims of physical and mental violence, exclusion and discrimination. According to data from the Ministry of Health, in the period from 1980 to 2005, 2,511 homosexuals were murdered in Brazil, in the most part victims of homophobic crimes: 72% were gay men, 25% transsexual and 3% lesbians. Due to this discrimination and prejudice, talking about the LGBTIQ community, especially in respect to the sexuality of this population, became a taboo.
In view of the difficulties demonstrated by health professionals to meet patients of the LGBTIQ community, we perform an activity directed to the training of medical students (and students from other areas of health) to promote a more qualified, effective and human care for this population in the future.
Despite all the achievements of the LGBTIQ community, nowadays, there are still many reports of disrespect and prejudice on the part of those who should assist in maintaining the wellbeing of those people, and it is this reality that we want to change to hold events like this, to rid people of their prejudices and fears in relation to what is different.

Target groups and beneficiaries:

The target public of this action directly involves the health professionals and LGBTIQ community.

Objectives and indicators of success:

Main objective of the activity is to discuss about differents ways of get sick in this community, and about the differences between these people talking about sexual identification and gender identification. But this activity also aims to show the importance of a good patient-doctor relationship in this community, increase the taxes of humanity professionals trained to attend different kinds of patients, give a better understanding about differents process of getting sick in LGBTIQ community, to train health professionals to observe and adapt the biopsychosocial reality in which the patient is inserted, increase indirectly the probability of adherence to treatment with a better relationship between the professional and the patient based on trust and respect.
The indicators of success of this activity are based on the evaluation method applied and can be noted by the great public. Based in what they learned in the activity, with these method we can evaluate the knowledge of gender, sex and how would they attend a LGBTIQ patient. We can see the success of the activity with these statistics: 88,6% of the participants know the difference between gender and sex, 51,9% of the participants answered that they would approach the patient by the social name. These indicators are intimately connected with the aims of these activity, and is possible to notice that all the aims were achieved. In this way, we can observe positive results with the statistics of the event, and a indication of success of the same.

Methodology:

The inscriptions of the event were given through an online questionnaire from May 24 to June 5. The event was attended by 79 participants, and the impact measurement was performed by an online questionnaire and a questionnaire in game format at the end of the activity. Initially, during the accreditation of the participants of the event, There was a small cocktail at the entrance. After the cocktail reception we had a lecture with a psychologist who addressed the psychological aspects of care and the differences among members of the LGBTIQ community. The event followed with a lecture by a sexologist that addressed the medical aspects of the patients, the new DSM and ICD guidelines, and aspects of sexual reassignment surgery and what is the protocol for it to be by the SUS (Unified Health System). Each lecture lasted 40 minutes. After lectures, we had a panel discussion composed by the lecturers, social worker specialized in ethics in the LGBTIQ, a transsexual woman, a LGBTIQ psychologist, and the vice president of a LGBTIQ militant NGO. Participants were able to send their questions to a moderator’s WhatsApp and heal their doubts. We received around 30 questions. At the end of the event a questionnaire was carried out through the Kahoot website referring to the topics covered in the event. Kahoot is an online site where participants are given a PIN and questions in their cell phones. This is an interactive, dynamic and innovative way to measure the subject developed during the event, as well as encouraging participants with a first place (the online application builds a number of hits and response time). The questions were pre-formulated by the lecturers and members of IFMSA Brazil UCS.The event started at 19:00 and closed at 22:00 on June 5, 2017

Plans for evaluation:

Before the start of the event was made a questionnaire with the follow questions: 1. You know the difference between sex and gender? 2. You know the difference between transvestite, transsexual and transgender? 3. Transsexual can go to the gynecologist 4. If a transvestite/ transsexual/ transgender came into your office how would you approach him/her?
In the end of the event, a new questionnaire was made to evaluate the knowledge of the participants with questions already mentioned plus the following questions: 1. What is gender ID? 2. Which are the rules that must be follow to make sexual reassignment surgery, except: 3. We can consider types of sexual orientation, except: 4. About the HIV e homossexualism in some countries and world, talk about it.