LGBT Reflection

I feel that the sexual orientation and gender identity of patients should be included in Electronic Health Records. I view it as the same concept of health care provider knowing your allergies, if your sexually active, or what medications you are on. It is all relevant. Especially for the LGBT community. There are so many health risks associated with the LGBT community that could be prevented or properly treated in a timely manner to prevent further complications if their sexual orientation and gender identity were to be a general charting practice. The LGBT community would be able to get the right help with contraception, medication, or their mental health. I understand that many LGBT may be apprehensive about sharing this information with their health care providers for fear of judgement or ridicule but if we promote understanding and acceptance from our health providers I think it will be a great benefit to the LGBT community. 

Knowing the gender identity of your patients will ensure that you do not offend them by using the wrong gender pronouns when talking to them or about them to other health care staff. This will hopefully improve the trust and comfort level between the patient and their health care provider. Knowing the patient's sexual orientation would be beneficial for the prevention or detection of sexually transmitted infections or mental health concerns. With proper screenings the instances of sexually transmitted diseases could drastically decrease for future LGBT. The spread of HIV could also be prevented with proper screenings and patient education. This knowledge could also help with other everyday patient concerns such as contraception, family planning, aging, and other patient concerns.

Overall I think collecting this data will have so many benefits for every patient and health care provider.

 

~ Samantha Holzberger

Additional Resources

Additional Resource 1:
Apply cultural awareness to all workplace relationships

This educational website about cultural awareness in the workplace provides interactive learning tools that keep the user engaged in the learning material. There are 6 activities within the information given that give the reader an opportunity to practice their knowledge and discover how much they really know. It covers all aspects of other cultures like clothing, religion, and language. Although this website does not really go into depth about specific cultures, it is still very thorough. This website is also more of a generalized information site for any workplace. Despite this generalization, I think it would be very beneficial for anyone going into health care to utilize. The information given about how other cultures may be different from your own would be very helpful in nursing or any medical profession.
This website is a very reliable resource because it was made by the Department of Education and Training  of the State of New South Wales. It is an educational site that also provides an extensive list of other websites and textbooks to explore for further resources. It was also published fairly recently in 2008 so the information is still relevant in the workplace today.

Additional Resource 2:
Dynamics of Diversity

This website would be ideal for someone like myself going into health care. It is focused on cultural competency in nursing. This article gives great examples of how being culturally illiterate could end disastrously for either the patient or the health care personnel. The author also uses a great acronym for COMPETENCE ( Caring, Ongoing, Multidimensional, Proactive, Ethics, Trust, Education, Networking, Confidence, and Evaluation) to help remind us of the key elements for a culturally aware workplace. This article also does not go into great depths about every different culture but it does use quite a few in the scenarios given to demonstrate cultural differences in health care. I think the scenarios are a good way for the readers that work in health care to relate to the actual concept of cultural awareness. As someone who already started working in health care as a CNA I can relate to the situations the author gives.
This is a scholarly article which makes it a very reliable resource. The article was published by The National Student Nursing Association. The author is Marianne R. Jeffreys, EdD, RN. She is a professor at both the CUNY College of Staten Island and the City University of New York. Jeffreys has a list of 12 references included with her article as well.

~ Samantha