Austrian University Hospital Physicians’ Barriers to and Reasons for Assessing Their Patients’ Sexual Orientation

ABSTRACT

The current online-questionnaire study examined physicians’ (N = 135; 51.9% women and 48.1% men) attitudes toward homosexuality and assessed physicians’ barriers to and reasons for asking patients about their sexual orientation at an Austrian university hospital. Only 37.1% of female physicians and 27.7% of male physicians included questions about their patients’ sexual orientation in everyday clinical practice. The most commonly reported barrier was the belief that sexual orientation was irrelevant for healthcare. Reported discomfort or negative attitudes toward homosexuality were low and did not play a role in the frequency of physicians’ everyday assessment of patients’ sexual orientation. Physicians mostly stated concerns for their patients’ sexual health as reasons for assessing sexual orientation. Medical education or training programs need to include more thorough education with regard to sexual orientation, minority stress and health disparities. It is important that physicians recognize the relevance of assessing their patients’ sexual orientation.

KEYWORDS:

• Patient-physician conversations
• assessing sexual orientation
• physician
• hospital
• health care
• attitudes toward homosexuality
• Austria

Disclosure statement

The authors have no conflict of interest.

Availability of data and materials

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This research was conducted without grants or financial support.