Care Without Assumption: The Perceptions of Transgender Persons Regarding Their Experiences With Nursing Care

Abstract

Transgender persons lead highly marginalized lives coupled with secondary social issues, making it challenging for them to receive respectful quality healthcare. The purpose of this study was to explore the lived experiences of transgender patients, so that nursing curricular changes may be instituted. The narrative inquiry allowed the exploration of patient perceptions with nursing care. Four themes emerged, including marginalization, uninformed nursing, system factors, and nursing role significance. Transgender persons suffer from discrimination and feelings of marginalization as a result of institutional culture, personal bias, and assumption. More research may support curricular and system advances for transgender patients.

‘Treat me with respect’: transgender persons’ experiences of encounters with healthcare staff

“…These and other humiliating experiences described in our results also correspond with previous research describing how transgender persons face discriminatory, cisnormative and heteronormative assumptions and routines (e.g. 4,9,17,18,20). Further, when transgender persons experience that their gender becomes the main focus regardless of their actual healthcare needs, as described in our category treat me according to my needs, this might be understood as a violation of dignity by being seen, but only as a member of a group .…”

“…To the best of our knowledge, only a few recent research studies of experiences with health care have a specific focus on transgender persons’ perspectives (4,9,13–20). Three of the studies addressed health care in general (16,17,19), and one focused on nursing care (18), one on positive healthcare experiences (19), and one on gender‐based violence and transphobia in health care (16). One study (9) addressed assisted reproductive services, and one (20) focused on experiences during the sex reassignment process.…”

“…The experiences of transgender persons have often been studied together with those of LGBTQ + persons in general (10)(11)(12). To the best of our knowledge, only a few recent research studies of experiences with health care have a specific focus on transgender persons' perspectives (4,9,(13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20). Three of the studies addressed health care in general (16,17,19), and one focused on nursing care (18), one on positive healthcare experiences (19), and one on gender-based violence and transphobia in health care (16).…”

“…Contributing to transgender persons negative experiences of health care are discriminatory, cisnormative and heteronormative assumptions and routines (4,9,17,18,20) as well as a lack of competence in regard to transgender-related issues (4,15,17,18,20). Transgender persons' experiences involve being denied service (9,16), having information withheld from them (20), being humiliated and ridiculed (4) and being subjected to violence from healthcare staff (16).…”

Transgender people in the nursing discourse: An integrative review

“…Historically, trans people have been part of global society, still, in terms of access to health care services; only in the last few decades, there has been an increasing attention in this area (Rivera, 2019).…”