When it comes to sharing sexuality and gender identity with health care providers, many LGBT patients would prefer to do so in writing, a new study finds.
Collecting data on sexual orientation and gender identity has extensive public health implications, with the potential to highlight disparities facing LGBT populations, said lead study author Adil Haider, MD, MPH, director of disparities and emerging trauma systems in the Department of Surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
In the study, published in December in JAMA Network Open, researchers sought to determine the best patient-centered approach to collecting data on gender and sexual orientation. Researchers compated patients’ experiences at four emergency departments talking about their sexual orientation and gender identity with a nurse, versus writing the information on a form.
The study found that patients who identified as sexual and gender minorities were almost three times more likely to prefer sharing information on sexual orientation and gender identity on a form than speaking about it with a nurse. There were no significant differences in data collection preferences among non-LGBT patients.
While about 80 percent of clinicians incorrectly believed that patients would not provide information on sexual orientation and gender identity, just 10 percent of patients said they would not offer such information. According to Haider, the findings show that LGBT patients are open to providing information on sexual orientation and gender identity when straight and cisgender people receive the same questions and the focus is on population health.
“We health care providers don’t know everything that our patients want, and that sometimes our preconceived notions are not what our patients want,” Haider told The Nation’s Health.
Questions about sexual orientation and gender identity should also be asked as part of demographic forms rather than social history, Haider said. Questions about sexual orientation tend to be placed alongside those about unhealthy behaviors such as smoking and alcohol consumption, making it seem as though it is wrong to identify as other than straight, he said.
Even in emergency care settings, asking people about their sexual orientation and gender identity can be beneficial, as long as everyone gets the same questions, Haider said. He noted that it is important for providers to keep in mind patients’ backgrounds and identities to ensure that they receive optimal care.
In its objectives for improving the health of the nation, Healthy People 2020 is encouraging better collection of data on LGBT populations. The objectives on LGBT health call for an increase in population-based data systems and state-level surveys and data systems that include standardized questions on LGBT people.
Haider said he believes that incorporating such data on sexual orientation and gender identity into electronic health systems is a step in the right direction toward promoting patient-centered care.
“This kind of data hopefully can be used to create standards and create the precedent that’s needed for health systems to say, look, we need to be collecting this information,” he said.
For more information, visit http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2018.6506.
- Copyright The Nation’s Health, American Public Health Association
