Explorative Questionnaire Study About Education with Regard to the Health of Sexual Minorities at an Austrian Medical University

ABSTRACT

Physicians can play a critical role in helping lesbian, gay, and bisexual-identified (LGB) individuals face minority stress. The current questionnaire study among 305 medical students (62.6% women/37.4% men; M_age = 23.4, SD = 3.2) assessed whether medical students learn about LGB-specific concepts at an Austrian medical university. Students reported that their education contained little content about LGB-specific concepts. The majority of students did not hold negative attitudes toward homosexuality and they would like a larger range of courses concerning LGB-specific topics. The barrier most strongly associated with the intention to ask future patients about their sexual orientation was the belief that sexual orientation was irrelevant for clinical practice. Future education programs on LGB-specific topics may not need to focus on reducing negative attitudes toward sexual minorities, but should contain more facts on LGB individuals’ specific healthcare needs and explain to students why a patient’s sexual orientation is important to healthcare.

KEYWORDS:

• Medical education
• knowledge about sexual minorities’ sexual health
• medical students
• assessing sexual orientation
• negativity toward sexual minorities
• LGB individuals’ healthcare needs
• Austria

Ethics approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethics standards of the institutional research committee. The medical university’s Ethics Committee exempted the current study from full ethics review (08.05.2019). The study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki (World Medical Association, 2013) and the standards of the American Psychological Association (APA, 2002).

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all participants included in the study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research was conducted without grants or financial support.