A Knowledge, Attitude, and Practice Study Amongst Medical Students of Kolkata India, Regarding Transgender Health Issues

Background: Transgender individuals face unique healthcare needs that are often unmet due to systemic barriers and social stigma.Medical students are future doctors; it is imperative to study their mindset regarding transgender health issues. Materials and methods:A cross-sectional study was conducted between December 2024 and January 2025 using a validated questionnaire distributed to 99 second-year MBBS students at a private medical college.p < 0.05 is considered statistically significant.The Mann-Whitney U test was conducted using STATA 14 software.Results: The majority of the participants (69.7%) strongly agreed on the necessity of including transgender issues in the medical curriculum, which is currently lacking in India.Lower perception was noted in familiarity with transgender medical issues (32.32% strongly agreed), and comfort in treating transgender patients for gender-related issues (38.38%strongly agreed), suggesting gaps in familiarity and comfort.About 45.45% participants strongly agreed on the necessity for more training in transgender medicine, and 55.56% strongly agreed on being comfortable in treating transgender patients for non-gender-related issues.Conclusion: The study highlights the lack of transgender inclusive training among the second-year medical students.This is a concerning finding, considering gaps already persist in familiarity with transgender-specific medical issues and comfort in addressing gender-related concerns worldwide.There is an immediate requirement for the addition of transgender-specific healthcare issues in the Indian medical curriculum to ensure training of transgender-inclusive doctors in the country.