Medical School Curriculum and Inclusive Communication: Preparing Chicago Medical Students to Communicate with the LGBTQ+ Patient Population

The LGBTQ+ population faces discrimination in many forms including misgendering. When this occurs in healthcare, patients experience a breach of trust that dissuades them from accessing the care they need. Medical schools are interested in changing this; two Chicago medical schools, 'Lakeshore' and 'Sears,' claim to provide a curriculum that is patient-oriented. This study investigates the institutions' curricular strategies for LGBTQ+ patient communication and their sufficiency in preparing medical students to meet their established 'patient care benchmarks,' which should include LGBTQ+ patient-oriented care. The institutions' sufficiency was assessed by medical students' perception of their own readiness for conversations with patients. The results demonstrated that while current curricular strategies train students to practice a sufficient quality of patient care to work with the LGBTQ+ community, nuances in gender-affirming language and communication are yet to be deeply explored in curricula. In addition, these strategies are not well-integrated over the traditional four year medical school curriculum, causing disjointed comprehension and application.