Purpose: To
characterize transgender healthcaretraining during OB/GYN residency.
Background: Professional medical organizations increasingly recognize the importance
of transgender healthcare, but the training currently offered in OB/GYN
residencies is not well understood.
Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional survey of a regionally representative
random sample of 100 from 236 OB/GYN residency program directors between August
2016 and June 2017. Questions addressed demographics, presence and type of
resident transgender healthcare training. We compared attitudes, barriers and
facilitators between programs that did and did not offer transgender healthcare
training using chi-squared testing.
Results: Among 61 responding program directors, 50.8% (N=31) reported offering
transgender healthcare training, Region of country, program type and size did
not differ between those offering and not offering training. Of those offering clinical training in
transgender healthcare, 41.9% did so in generalist and 22.6% in specialist
OBGYN clinics, 32.3% provided hormone therapy, and 16.1% learned about gender
reassignment surgery techniques.
Programs offering training were more likely to report a transgender
community requesting services (90.3% versus 53.3%, p=0.001), interested faculty
(45.2% versus 20.0%, p=0.03), time allotted for training (29.0% versus 0%,
p=0.001) and resident interest (64.5% versus 36.7%, p=0.03). The most significant barrier to providing
training was lack of interested faculty, reported by 73.3% of programs that did
not versus 38.7% that did offer training (p=0.006).
Discussions: Only
half of responding residency programs offer transgender healthcare training.
CREOG named transgender healthcare an educational objective in 2013 and should
support this by identifying interested faculty and resident champions who can
lead implementation at all OB/GYN residency programs.
Topics: CREOG & APGO Annual Meeting, 2018, Student, Resident, Faculty, Clerkship Director, Residency Director, Patient Care, Medical Knowledge, Interpersonal & Communication Skills, GME, General Ob-Gyn, Sexuality,
Shannon Rush, MD
