LGBTQ+ people are frequently exposed to stressors in healthcare settings, including homophobic policies, refusal of care, misgendering, and other forms of mistreatment. Many of these stressors disproportionately affect LGBTQ+ patients in ways not typically experienced by their heterosexual or cisgender counterparts, contributing to inequities in care. These encounters have meaningful consequences for the health and well-being of LGBTQ+ patients. To better understand the stressors LGBTQ+ patients face and how they respond to them, the current study interviewed 23 LGBTQ+ people. Findings indicate that LGBTQ+ patients experienced stress in healthcare settings through overt discrimination (e.g. refusal of care, slurs), implicit bias linking identity and health status, and provider knowledge gaps reflected in misgendering and non-inclusive documents. Participants also described diverse responses to these stressors, ranging from nondisclosure and avoidance tactics to proactive self-advocacy. They also offered recommendations for improving care, emphasizing mandatory education and training for providers, tools to identify LGBTQ+ affirming providers, and visible signals of inclusion in healthcare spaces. Together, these findings illustrate how discriminatory communication functions as a form of communicative disenfranchisement and how such encounters contribute to minority stress, producing tangible health consequences for LGBTQ+ populations.
Merrill et al. (Sun,) studied this question.