Transgender Health and Medical Education: The Existing Gaps and the Need for Curricular Reforms – A Systematic Review

Abstract

Time and again it has been envisaged that health-care services imparted should be inclusive and should be equitably distributed regardless of any sociodemographic determinants. The purpose of the current review is to identify the problems encountered by transgender people and the role of medical education in preparing medical professionals who are competent enough to address their special needs. An extensive search of all materials related to the topic was carried out on the PubMed and Google Scholar search engines, and a total of 49 articles were selected based on their suitability with the current review objectives. Keywords used in the search include transgender and medical education in the title alone only. A number of studies and review articles have concluded that there is an urgent need to augment the knowledge, skills, and attitude of medical students to improve the clinical care of transgender people. Medical educators have to acknowledge the need and take concerted efforts to ensure the delivery of holistic, transgender-specific health-care education to all medical students. To conclude, transgender people have been subjected to a wide range of challenging circumstances that have significantly impacted their chances to avail of health care. One of the potential reasons for this is the lack of sensitization of medical doctors about transgender health in the current era. There is an immense need to bridge the existing gap, and it has to begin with bringing about curricular reforms and preparing the current crop of medical students about issues pertaining to transgender health during their training period.