Cultural humility training interventions for healthcare students to improve care for gender and sexual minority groups: Protocol for a systematic review and a proposed meta-analysis

Abstract

Introduction: To deliver comprehensive and efficient care, it is crucial to understand and address the unique healthcare needs of gender and sexual minority (GSM) groups. Implementing cultural humility training may enhance healthcare students' sensitivity, awareness, and proficiency in serving patients. However, there's a necessity to thoroughly evaluate the impact and effectiveness of these interventions, especially in relation to addressing the distinct healthcare requirements of GSM groups. This protocol describes the steps in conducting a systematic review (SR) to investigate if cultural humility training interventions for medical students enhance care of GSM groups. This SR aims to guide the creation of focused interventions and instructional plans to support fair healthcare delivery for GSM populations.Methods and Analysis: The objective of this SR encompass a comprehensive examination across multiple databases such as PubMed (NCBI), Scopus (Elsevier), Cochrane (Wiley), Web of Science (Clarivate). Using keywords and MeSH phrases, the search method will find relevant research from each database's launch from January 1, 2000, until August 30, 2024, emphasizing English-language publications. To ensure comprehensiveness, reference lists of qualifying papers will be thoroughly reviewed. We shall extract the data and use the appropriate Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) checklist to evaluate the quality of the included study. By synthesizing the data, the findings will illuminate the value and efficacy of cultural humility training interventions for medical students in enhancing GSM group care. This synthesis will incorporate quantitative studies, to ensure a comprehensive understanding of the interventions' impacts.Ethics and dissemination: Ethics approval is not sought as the review will only synthesize data from published studies. The findings will be presented at conferences and published in peer-reviewed journals.PROSPERO registration number: CRD42024533825Strengths and limitations of this study:•Our study examines cultural humility training, emphasizing self-reflection and power dynamics, specifically relevant for gender and sexual minority (GSM) groups.•We focus on healthcare students, exploring how early cultural humility training can impact future practice and GSM care.•This is the first systematic review and meta-analysis of cultural humility training for GSM groups, addressing a gap in existing literature.•Our findings aim to inform curriculum and educational policies, addressing a significant need in medical training.•Limiting the review to English-language studies may exclude important research conducted in other languages, potentially missing valuable perspectives and findings that could enhance the understanding of cultural humility training's global applicability.•The review may face challenges in measuring the long-term impact of cultural humility training interventions on healthcare students' competency and attitudes, as existing studies might have a limited follow-up period