Special Communication Needs: LGBTQ Patient Care

In medicine, we often come across patients with specific needs, the most common example being children with special needs or immigrants who do not understand the local language. In these cases, our attitude is usually open and welcoming, we look for ways to build a bridge between them and us, to lessen any difficulties that might arise. But there is a community of people who are afraid of accessing the health system because they have suffered discrimination and, in some cases, even verbal or physical violence from health professionals. I am referring of course to the LGBTQ community. There is a great deal of evidence that shows that LGBTQ people do not seek medical assistance; that they do so when it’s too late; or that they do not return for follow up checks; all due to bad experiences in which they have suffered disrespect, abuse, and discrimination. One of the most resonant examples was that of Robert Eads, whose documentary “Southern comfort” shows the vicissitudes he went through in the 1990s for the treatment of his ovarian cancer. But we have also witnessed transgender patients being called by their “dead name” or doctors seeing their illness as just punishment for their “misbehavior.” An experience that we presented at the American Congress of Clinical Oncology in 2019 shows that students undertaking our own oncology course are better prepared to treat the cancer of a transgender person rather than the patient. It should provoke deep reflection that people in our community, who adequately understand our language, are alienated from medicine and healthcare because of what we say and the way we treat them.