Reforming Healthcare: Leading with a gender-inclusive lens
With the celebration of pride month comes an increased awareness and advocacy for the LGBTQIA+ community worldwide. Many take to celebrate in the festivities and initiatives, all for the cause of inclusivity of these marginalized communities. While championing the cause of equality and inclusivity for all is a noble one, it should not be confined to just one month of the year for everyone. On a day to day basis, members of the LGBTQIA+ community face marginalization in virtually every walk of life– at the workplace, in casual social settings, and even in their healthcare settings.
While I genuinely believe that almost every healthcare practitioner out there truly wants to help their patients, in some instances, bedside manner and etiquette fall by the wayside. More specifically, learning how to treat through a gender inclusive lens for marginalized individuals such as those of the LGBTQIA+ community is lacking in a majority of healthcare fields.
I was privileged enough over the past couple of weeks to take part in a course/discussion about leading with a gender inclusive lens as a healthcare professional. It was enlightening as a healthcare professional to better understand gender diversity and gender identity; furthermore, I now understand that learning how to apply inclusive practice principles is not a luxury, but a necessity.
Learning of the stats, it’s hard to realize that as forward-thinking as we are, there are still so many areas in society where marginalized groups suffer. In the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey, it was noted that 30% of those who had a job in the past year reported being fired, denied a promotion, or experiencing some other form of mistreatment related to their gender identity or expression. Furthermore, 33% of those who saw a healthcare provider had at least one negative experience related to being transgender. Finally, 23% of individuals didn’t seek the healthcare they needed in the past year due to fear of being mistreated as a transgender person. Imagine forgoing care in fear of being judged or discriminated against for just being yourself. I am sure that some of you can relate.
So what can we as a society do about it?
On an individual level, building our knowledge to better understand vocabulary surrounding gender identity and gender diversity is the first step. For example, it is important to understand that gender is a complex interrelationship between the three dimensions of body (what we’re assigned at birth), identity (internal sense of being), and social (how we present/are viewed by others) gender. Another individual step we can take is to start identifying ourselves with our pronouns, either verbally or in writing. On a clinical level, things such as having visual representation of LGBTQIA+ people in your clinic space, having accessible bathrooms, and being committed to an inclusive intake process are all steps in the right direction.
While we as a society have come a long way, we must realize that there is still work to be done. We must all begin to shift our lens of the world and try to sympathize with each individual’s unique experience of intersectionality. Even writing this piece as a cis-gender, straight male, I must understand that my view and lens on this situation comes from one of privilege and may vary greatly from groups that have been oppressed. I also understand that simply taking a single course on gender inclusivity does not instantly make me a champion for marginalized communities. I would like to make it clear though that this is not all for nothing. We as a society have come leaps and bounds from where we used to be in regards to inclusivity. It is not that we are not doing well; it is just that we should always strive to do better.
Sources: 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey (USTS) – https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/web/RCMD/studies/37229
All points are referenced and synthesized from the intellectual property of Wes Chernin (he/him), M.S. CCC-SLP from the Toronto Adult Speech Clinic.