Attitudes of Medical Students Toward Sexual Minorities: A Multicentric Survey from the Medical Education Without Discrimination Project

ABSTRACT

This study, as a part of the ’Medical Education without Discrimination (MED) Project,” focuses on investigating attitudes toward sexual minorities and demographics among Turkish medical students. In the needs assessment phase of MED Project, a survey covering demographics, sexual orientation, attitudes toward sexual minorities, and Index of Attitudes Toward Homosexuals by Hudson & Ricketts (6-point Likert) was conducted among 523 medical students of one public and two nonprofit private medical schools in Istanbul. Of the students, 4.2% declared themselves as non-heterosexual. The findings highlight that medical students are on the verge of homophobia (44th percentile). Homophobia was significantly higher among public university students, males, younger individuals, those who originated from underdeveloped settlements, those who grew up with mothers who did not graduate from university, those who considered themselves less happy, and those without LGBTI+ acquaintances. Of the respondents, 14.1% do not perceive LGBTI+ people as equals within the community, and 75.7% assert that they would conceal their own LGBTI+ identity if they were part of this community. This study highlights that the need for targeted interventions in medical education in line with the global commitment to reduce inequalities and promote inclusive health care.

KEYWORDS:

• Homosexuality
• LGBTI+
• homophobia
• sexual minorities
• medical students

Disclosure statement

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

Authors’ contributions

All authors have contributed to and approved the final manuscript.

OFB: Conceptualization, Software, Data curation, Investigation, Methodology, Validation, Investigation, Supervision, Funding acquisition, Project administration, Visualization, Resources, Formal analysis, Writing-original draft, Writing—review, editing.

HN: Investigation, Validation, Supervision, Data curation, Resources, Review.

IK: Investigation, Validation, Supervision, Editing, Review.

YNY: Investigation, Resources, Data curation.

DM: Data curation, Investigation, Resources.

SK: Writing, review & editing, Resources, Formal analysis, Project administration, Supervision, Funding acquisition, Conceptualization, Validation.

Consent to participate

Written informed permission was obtained from all participants or their legal representatives.

Consent for publication

Written informed consent is available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Data availability statement

The datasets generated and analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Code availability

The codes used throughout the study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Ethics statement

All procedures were performed according to the ethical standards of the Declaration of Helsinki and the National Research Committee. This study was approved by the Ethics Committee (approval number: 2020/91, date: February 12, 2016).

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

The project of Medical Education without Discrimination was awarded with a grant (No. OR2015-25459) for Advancing Human Rights through Higher Education Program to the Foundation of Istanbul Faculty of Medicine by Open Society Institute Assistance Foundation.