For Public Hospital Employees in NYC, New Training on Gay Patients

A doctor asks a girl if she is using condoms, and a boy if he has a girlfriend. A woman has to fill out the usual medical forms, asking whether she needs birth control, and if she is married, single, divorced or widowed.
But what if the girl is a lesbian, and the boy is gay. What if the woman, also a lesbian, is in a relationship, and neither single, married, divorced nor widowed?
The city?s Health and Hospitals Corporation, which runs public hospitals, has decided that it needs to reduce the likelihood that such awkward, inconsiderate, questions will be asked. With the help of an advocacy group, the National LGBT Cancer Network, it has put together a training program that will be required of all 38,000 system employees, from physicians to clerks.
H.H.C. officials said that research suggested that gay, lesbian and transgender patients were more likely than others to avoid medical care because they feared encountering unsympathetic or even hostile health care workers. The training is intended to teach workers to be less judgmental, and to ask open-ended questions that make patients feel more comfortable talking about their sexual and romantic relationships.
For instance, said Liz Margolies, founder of the National LGBT Cancer Network, a doctor examining a breast biopsy would be counseled not to ask the woman if she wanted her husband in the room, but rather to ask something like, ?Is your partner in the waiting room??
Al Aviles, president of the hospitals corporation, said a 15-minute training session would be given to every employee and would be a required part of orientation. Another 60-minute session will be available to departments. The training, which Mr. Aviles said cost $35,000 to develop, includes a video (available on the hospital corporation?s Web site) with a title reflecting the program?s philosophy: ?To treat me, you have to know who I am.?
He said that the system already tried to ensure sensitivity to the needs of racial and ethnic minorities, and that this seemed like a natural extension. Mr. Aviles said the Joint Commission, the national organization that accredits hospitals, has called for hospitals to show that they are sensitive to the cultural needs of patients, including gay, lesbian and transgender patients.
However, changing the standard forms that ask whether patients are married, single and so forth, is not on the horizon, Mr. Aviles said, but has been done in some specialized settings and may be considered systemwide in the future. ?It?s a complicated proposition,? given the number of forms the system deals with, he said.

Source: http://wglb-tv.blogspot.com/2011/05/for-public-hospital-employees-in-nyc.html

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