LGBTQIA+ Health in Emergency Medicine Residency Curricula: A Pilot Needs Assessment

The quality of and access to care by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual, and other sexual and gender diverse (LGBTQIA+) patients is often compromised by physician knowledge deficits, bias, and inadequate training in LGBTQIA+ health. Emergency medicine physicians must be prepared to care for LGBTQIA+ patients, but there is a lack of standardized training in LGBTQIA+ health across emergency medicine residencies. We sought to assess current practices and perform a needs assessment of LGBTQIA+ health teaching across a sample of emergency medicine residencies.

Residents from five geographically diverse emergency medicine residencies in the United States were invited to complete an online Qualtrics survey between April 2024 and June 2024. The survey included questions regarding the scope of LGBTQIA+ health exposure in residency as well as delivery preferences to improve LGBTQIA+ health teaching within residency curricula.

One hundred residents across the five programs participated in the survey (37% response rate). Most residents reported some exposure to gender-affirming language practices and LGBTQIA+ health disparities. Topics with the least reported coverage were pediatric considerations, legal considerations, and taking an organ inventory. Overall, participants were more comfortable performing clinical care for sexual minority patients than gender minority patients. Suggestions for improving LGBTQIA+ health education emphasized the necessity of incorporating LGBTQIA+ health into the core curriculum and including LGBTQIA+ community members and patients into curricular design and delivery.

The results of this study can guide future educational assessment and curricular development efforts to improve LGBTQIA+ health content delivery during emergency medicine residency training.