Facilitating LGBT Medical, Health and Social Care Content in Higher Education Teaching

Zowie Davy,Sarah Amsler,Karen Duncombe

doi:10.17583/qre.2015.1210

Zowie Davy, Sarah Amsler + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.17583/qre.2015.1210

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Abstract

<span style="font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: ES; mso-fareast-language: ES; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA;">Increasingly, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) health care is becoming an important quality assurance feature of primary, secondary and tertiary healthcare in Britain. While acknowledging these very positive developments, teaching LGBT curricula content is contingent upon having educators understand the complexity of LGBT lives. The study adopted a qualitative mixed method approach. The study investigated how and in what ways barriers and facilitators of providing LGBT medical, health and social care curricula content figure in the accreditation policies and within undergraduate and postgraduate medical and healthcare teaching. This paper illustrates opposing views about curricula inclusion. The evidence presented suggests that LGBT content teaching is often challenged at various points in its delivery. In this respect, we will focus on a number of resistances that sometimes prevents teachers from engaging with and providing the complexities of LGBT curricula content. These include the lack of collegiate, colleague and student cooperation. By investing some time on these often neglected areas of resistance, the difficulties and good practice met by educators will be explored. This focus will make visible how to support medical, health and social care students become aware and confident in tackling contemporaneous health issues for LGBT patients.</span>

Highlights

Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) health care is becoming an important quality assurance feature of primary, secondary and tertiary healthcare in Britain
Participants were asked about the modules that they taught, whether their lectures and seminars were informed by accreditation policies and course reviews, how important LGBT curricula was for the modules that they taught, if LGBT content features in theirs and other educators’ modules, and whether inclusion or exclusion of LGBT curricula content was a personal pedagogical choice
Decisions about how much time and space can or should be dedicated to certain social and professional issues, ideas, ethical perspectives, practices and groups of people in any field – even ‘serendipitous’ ones – are shaped by judgments about what knowledge is, whose knowledge and experiences are valuable or necessary, and what role particular knowledge plays in maintaining or changing a status quo. In discussing these themes below, we draw both on examples from the discourse analysis derived from the accreditation policies, which frame this politics of knowledge, and from higher educators’ perceptions and experiences of the contemporaneous state of medical, health and social care teaching in Britain

Summary

Introduction

Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) health care is becoming an important quality assurance feature of primary, secondary and tertiary healthcare in Britain. While acknowledging these very positive developments, teaching LGBT curricula content is contingent upon having educators understand the complexity of LGBT lives. By investing some time on these often neglected areas of resistance, the difficulties and good practice met by educators will be explored This focus will make visible how to support medical, health and social care students become aware and confident in tackling contemporaneous health issues for LGBT patients.

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Conclusion