Family Physicians Providing Gender-Affirming Care to Transgender Individuals: Training Opportunities Identified in a Survey of Peers

05-08-2018 14:40

Purpose: To identify the characteristics of and training opportunities experienced by current providers of gender-affirming health care to transgender/gender-nonconforming individuals, and to describe their recommendations for training other individuals in this skill set.
Methods: A voluntary cross-sectional electronic survey was distributed to a multidisciplinary group of clinicians who worked for organizations dedicated to providing gender-affirming health care, who were subscribed to listservs joined by professionals interested in the care of transgender individuals, who attended conferences focused on educating clinicians about gender-affirming care, and who were professional colleagues of any of the individuals in these groups. Responses were entered directly into an online database for analysis and identifying information was not gathered, ensuring anonymity of responses.
Results: Of 473 respondents, 42 (9%) were family physicians. While 41% of these physicians were less than 5 years post-residency, most were self-taught in gender-affirming care (61%) with a smaller cohort reporting training during residency (24%). Respondents felt that clinical experience/rotations and mentorship were important training opportunities for those within our discipline.
Conclusions: Family medicine physicians are well suited to provide care to transgender and gender nonconforming patients who are seeking gender-affirming primary care and hormones. While further research is needed to determine the optimal timing for this training, these results suggest that exposure to principles of gender-affirming care during family medicine residency would equip physicians with the skills necessary to enter the transgender care workforce postresidency.

Author(s):Shanna Stryker, MD; Sarah Pickle, MD; Harini Pallerla, RA; Julia Bedard-Thomas, MD
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