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 Only one in 10 people would refuse to provide their sexual
orientation, researchers found.
The goal of the research is to develop "a patient-centered method to
ask patients about their sexual orientations and gender identities,"
said lead author Dr. Adil Haider, of Brigham and Women's Hospital
and Harvard Medical School in Boston.
Haider and colleagues write in JAMA Internal Medicine that the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services and the Institutes of
Medicine recommend routine collection of information on sexual
orientation. The government recently said there should be a way to
include that information in electronic health records.
In the new study, researchers examined patients' willingness to
report their sexual orientation in the emergency department and the
best way to collect that information.
They interviewed 53 patients and 26 healthcare providers from the
greater Washington, D.C. area. Then they conducted a national survey
with 804 straight participants and 712 lesbian, gay or bisexual
participants. They also surveyed 429 doctors and nurses who work in
emergency departments.
In the interviews, most people said sexual orientation is always
relevant to their treatment at the emergency department. Many
believed it was something their healthcare providers needed to know.
Healthcare providers, on the other hand, viewed sexual orientation
as something to ask about only when medically relevant. One nurse
said sexual orientation is nobody's business if the patient comes in
for a cold or a cut.
"They don’t want to make anyone feel uncomfortable or weird," Haider
told Reuters Health. "So they think patients are not going to want
to answer this question."
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"Meanwhile, the patients are saying 'just ask us,' but you need to
ask everybody," he said.
Based on the national survey, about 78 percent of healthcare
providers thought patients would refuse to provide their sexual
orientation. In fact, only 10 percent of patients said they would
not share that information.
People who identified as bisexual were more likely than others to
say they would refuse to report their sexual orientation. That
reluctance may be tied to past studies showing bisexual individuals
face more difficulty with their sexual orientation than other sexual
minorities, the researchers write.
Haider and colleague recently finished a study in which they tested
ways of asking patients about sexual orientation. The results have
not been published yet.
"People just want to feel normal and go to a place where they don’t
feel judged and are treated the same," Haider said.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2piCJgW JAMA Internal Medicine, online April
24, 2017.
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