Source: medpagetoday.com
PORTLAND, Oregon — Most pre-licensure nursing students said that they were willing to provide nursing care for transgender clients, a researcher reported here.
The Qualtrics survey was sent to 245 pre-licensure BSN students enrolled in an adult health nursing course, 23% of whom responded. One-third of the participants reported providing nursing care to a transgender client as a student, and nearly all participants reported positive attitudes towards transgender clients, according to Joseph De Santis, PhD, RN, NP, of the University of Miami School of Nursing and Health Studies in Coral Gables, Florida.
“All participants said they were willing to perform sexual health counseling, including HIV risk reduction and safer sex practices counseling. All of the participants reported a willingness to provide nursing skills with the exception of a small number of students who were unwilling to perform genital or anal-related assessments or procedures,” De Santis and co-author, Mary McKay, DNP, ARNP, also of the same institution, reported in a poster at the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care annual meeting.
“These students are a lot younger than those of us who grew up without really knowing much about transgender persons, even though there were all around us,” De Santis told MedPage Today. “But these students, who are [average age 25.83] have been exposed to transgender persons most of their life.”
However, their institution does have a gender reassignment surgery clinic so “most of our students have had contact with those patients,” he added. “So given their age and their previous contact with patients, they are probably more willing that others who haven’t had these contacts.”
De Santis and McKay noted that the majority of the survey sample was female, almost 25% identified as a member of the LGBT community, and one participant self-identified as transgender. “The results require cautious interpretation because of small sample size,” they stated.
De Santis toldMedPage Today that some of the students expressed concern about not having the appropriate training to care for transgender patients, “So our next plan is to help these students build skills; to give them the skills and tools to take care of the transgender individuals.”
Of one student who reported unwillingness to administrating rectal medications, administering enemas, performing dressing changes, or other tasks involved in caring for transgender patients, De Santis stated, “I applaud that person, his or her honesty, at least. But this would be a person you would not assign to treat a transgender person on your unit.” He acknowledged that nurses should not be assigned to patients based on their own biases, but “it happens.”
Survey participants completed a demographic questionnaire and the Transgender Attitudes and Beliefs Survey. They indicated their willingness to provide care and completed a checklist based on the clinical skills performed in an adult health nursing course, such as psychomotor and sexual health counseling.
Deborah Michell, RN, of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, noted that, at her institution, there is a HIV-dedicated unit, “but when [patients with HIV] would end [up] on other floors, due to overcrowding or some other reason, we did observe the nursing staff showing a reluctance to treat these individuals, even if they were just HIV patients, let along transgender patients. There were always some kinds of snide remarks. In general, there is a bias that persists among providers against these patients.”
Michell, who was not involved in the study, added that the current study “indicates that things are going in the right direction, as far as care for these patients is concerned. Things are much better now, thank God.”