Medical schools in the US and Canada are giving short shrift to the medical needs of LGBT patients, according to a study by the Stanford University School of Medicine which is published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. One needs to be a JAMA subscriber to actually read the report.
The web-based survey was submitted to 176 medical school deans in the US and Canada, with an 85% response rate.
The average amount of time spent teaching the potential doctors about health issues facing LGBT patients is about 5 hours over the entire curriculum.
Although many medical schools do address some LGBT-related health issues in their curricula, the conversation needs to go deeper, said the study’s lead author, Dr. Juno Obedin-Maliver, of the University of California, San Francisco.