Nursing pre-licensure and graduate education for LGBTQ health: A systematic review

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer plus (LGBTQ) people experience discrimination and health disparities compared to heterosexual cisgender people. Clinicians report discomfort and insufficient preparation for providing care to LGBTQ people and nursing has been slow to integrate LGBTQ health into curricula.

Conduct a systematic review to examine and critically appraise peer-reviewed literature on nursing student knowledge, skills, and attitudes (KSAs) regarding LGBTQ health and the development/evaluation of LGBTQ health content in nursing curricula.

A systematic review was conducted (N = 1275 articles from PubMed, LGBT Health, CINAHL, ERIC, and Health Source-Nursing/Academic Edition).

Twenty articles met inclusion criteria. Twelve studies described curricular interventions; however, there were few validated tools to evaluate content coverage or KSAs. Four themes emerged specific to LGBTQ health content inclusion.

While an emerging science of LGBTQ nursing education has been identified, more work is needed to build and evaluate a comprehensive curricular approach for full programmatic integration of LGBTQ health.

As nursing programs build LGBTQ content into nursing curricula, care must be taken to integrate this content fully with the depth of curricular content in population health, social determinants of health, social justice, intersectionality, cultural competence, and political advocacy.

Greater integration of LGBTQ health content into nursing education should be a priority for nursing education.