Understanding the Experiences of LGBTQ+ Identifying Medical Students in the UK: A Multi-Institutional Qualitative Study

Few studies exist exploring the experiences of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Queer, and other personal identifications within the queer spectrum (LGBTQ+) medical students, particularly utilising first-person narratives. The few studies that exist illustrate an international landscape of discrimination beyond that experienced by non-LGBTQ+ peers. This study aimed to enhance understanding of LGBTQ+ medical students’ experiences in their own words to consider if and what change is needed. Utilising Poststructural and Socio-Material epistemologies and Free Association Narrative Inquiry methodology, the researchers gathered the experiences of 60 medical students from 19 medical schools across the UK and spectrum of LGBTQ+ identification. In line with the epistemologies adopted, the data was analysed using Feminist Poststructural Discourse Analysis and Materialising Discourse Analysis. Structural inequalities, epistemic violence and minority stress were everyday experiences for participants. Emerging from the data were five dominant discourses related to these experiences: peers, placements, health and wellbeing, curriculum as an act of epistemic violence, and journeys and destinations. In one of the biggest studies of its kind, the researchers demonstrated that LGBTQ+ medical students experience intersectional oppression manifesting through complex material relationships. Furthermore, we illustrated that medical curriculum was epistemically violent towards these students and, adding to the subject literature, demonstrated minority stress in this population with consequences for their wellbeing. We argue that multi-level educational interventions are needed internationally to better support these students including transparency about past oppressions, and a shift in medical school culture to one where intersectional complexity is core.