Perception of undergraduate health field students about approaching LGBTI+ health

Abstract

Prejudice and discrimination against Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, Transvestites, Transsexuals, and Intersex people (LGBTI+) are present in the care provided by health professionals. In an attempt to reduce the inequalities of LGBTI+ people in the Unified Health System (SUS), the Ministry of Health instituted, in 2011, the National Policy for Comprehensive Health for Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, Transvestites and Transsexuals (NPCHLGBT). In order to strengthen the preparation of future professionals in favor of integral care in health institutions and considering the hypothesis that undergraduate courses in the health field do not have a sufficient approach to train future professionals to provide assistance to this population, this study aimed to evaluate the perception of undergraduate students of the Nursing, Nutrition, Medicine, Physiotherapy, Biomedicine, and Pharmacy courses concerning their approach, during professional training, on LGBTI+ health. This is a quantitative, exploratory, and descriptive study, carried out between February and April 2019, using an online questionnaire. 335 undergraduate students from a Higher Education Institution in São Paulo participated. The results showed that 48.36% of the participants did not feel prepared to provide comprehensive care to LGBTI+ people, with a statistically significant difference between the participants of the different undergraduate courses (p=0.003) and, for 82.39% of the participants, NPCHLGBT was not addressed in their coursework. It was also evident that, in the students' perception, the approach and specific knowledge about the health of the LGBTI+ population were not sufficient to prepare future professionals.

Keywords

• higher education. students. sexual and gender minorities. sexism. homophobia.