Responding

The LGBT, which stand for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender group have come a long way to be accepted and treated equal. In the past, they were mostly discriminated against for deviating from the traditional gender expectations but over the past decades, they have progressed towards achieving the same equality that those who only have opposite sex attractions face. They go through life sometimes without being accepted by their family and the community in which they live in. Even though this present society is more enlightened of the LGBT group and are now accepted and given equal rights in most states, their years of discrimination still prevents them from feeling safe and protected in their community. All these discrimination behaviors have caused an increase in the rates of psychiatric disorder, suicide, substance abuse in the LGBT group (Manzer , O’Sullivan & Doucet, 2018)

Despite the importance of protecting people from discrimination in the healthcare setting, there has been many stories reported in the media about how some people of the LGBT community have been unfairly treated and discriminated by healthcare professionals. They mostly delay seeking for medical treatments because of past experience such as having some healthcare providers blatantly refusing to care for them because they go against their beliefs, some have actually received less than optimum care because of their sexual orientation, and having to deal with some healthcare workers judgmental attitudes towards them. LGBT community continuous to encounter barriers to accessing health care mainly because of their reluctance to disclose their sexual or gender identity when receiving medical care; they are mostly reluctant to disclose their sexual and gender identity when receiving medical care. The reasons sometimes being fear of homophobic reactions, confidentiality concerns, past negative experiences with providers and fear of stigmatization.  Also, there are always insufficient number of providers that are competent in dealing with their issues, having structural barriers that impede access to health insurance and limiting medical decision rights for the LGBT and their partners and having lack of culturally appropriate prevention services (Manzer, O’Sullivan & Doucet, 2018)

Fear of stigmatization also prevent most of the LGBT people avoid seeking medical health for fear of stigmatization or maybe because of negative experience they have had. They sometimes fail to identify themselves as being in the LGBT group because they are scared that the healthcare professionals might be homophobic.To help promote the use of healthcare for the LGBT people, practitioners will need to improve awareness and take the necessary steps into creating an open, non-hostile environment. There has to be more community outreach and education to help attain optimum health care for this population (Manzer , O’Sullivan & Doucet, 2018).

References

Manzer, D., O’Sullivan, L. F. & Doucet, S. (2018). Myths, misunderstandings, and missing           information: Experiences of nurse practitioners providing primary care to lesbian, gay,           bisexual, and transgender patients. The Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality

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