Self-perceptions of medical students and educators regarding LGBTQ+ and sexual and gender minority (SGM) healthcare and SGM patients: cross-sectional survey

Abstract Context Providing adequate clinical training to care for patients of all demographics remains an important goal of medical education. Sexual and gender minority (SGM) patients are a population with consistently unmet clinical needs. Objectives The objective of this study is to assess baseline knowledge of SGM topics and perception toward treating SGM patients at a large osteopathic medical school. Methods A cross-sectional survey of faculty and osteopathic medical students at a large osteopathic medical school in the Northeast was administered. The survey contained 41 items regarding the comfort, knowledge, and preparedness to treat SGM patients. Data were collected from June 2021 to December 2021. The conventional cutoff to accept the null hypothesis was set at a p value of 0.05 for statistical hypothesis testing. Results The response rate was 24.3 %. Medical student respondents achieved higher knowledge scores than faculty respondents (p = 0.04), and younger respondents achieved higher knowledge scores than older respondents (p = 0.013). Heterosexual respondents reported lower aggregate comfort (p = 0.002) in treating SGM patients, whereas nonheterosexual respondents reported higher aggregate comfort in treatment of SGM patients. Clinical faculty perceived the medical curriculum to be less inclusive in addressing SGM topics in clinical medicine than nonclinical faculty (p = 0.001*), who overall felt that the medical curriculum was inclusive. Conclusions Among those surveyed, there were discrepancies in comfort treating SGM patients between heterosexual and nonheterosexual respondents, and younger respondents had increased knowledge on SGM health topics than older respondents. This research supports that osteopathic medical schools consider adopting the SGM medical education competencies published by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC).