Overview
We highlight the ways in which heteronormativity marginalizes Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, and Asexual populations (LGBTQIA) in clinical contexts. Recent research reveals that healthcare spaces and providers often convey micromessages that make this population feel anxious, unwelcome, or ashamed. Despite efforts to eliminate discriminatory practices and homophobic behavior, heteronormative ideals remain concretized in multiple ways, including small talk, healthcare forms, posters, brochures, intake procedures, and pronoun usage. LGBTQIA patients have reported fear of hostility, isolation, or refusal of service if they come out to their healthcare providers. Yet, if healthcare providers are to adequately enable patient autonomy and administer the standard of care for all patients, they need access to information related to sexual history and lifestyle. LGBTQIA individuals’ understandable avoidance of clinical encounters and hospitals’ general lack of initiative to reform healthcare spaces perpetuate one another. We analyze this perpetuating cycle and the double bind that results. Additionally, we discuss how and why consciousness raising and professional training on LGBTQIA issues will hit a number of obstacles and prove insufficient. For example, certain attempts to eradicate heteronormativity can result in a backlash, increasing tensions in waiting rooms or clumsiness in pronoun/patient reference on intake forms. We address the extent to which healthcare professionals have responsibilities to address heteronormativity as it arises interpersonally and institutionally, and we offer some considerations for concrete problem-solving.
This website contains the following:
This website contains the following:
- Our presentation at the 2015 Canadian Bioethics Society Annual Meeting
- A helpful handout for reference
- A list of resources for further study
- A blog for healthcare providers, patients, advocates, and others to use as an informal forum to discuss these issues and brainstorm.