🌈What is LGBTQIA+ affirming care?

📚Definition

LGBTQIA+ affirming care refers to making LGBTQIA+ people feeling included, supported and accepted, and providing them with the highest level of care. It encourage the development of positive attitudes among service and healthcare providers to address the impacts that discrimination and marginalization have on the lives, health, and well-being of LGBTQIA+ people.

👩‍🏫Guided by Ethics

Medical practitioners should be guided by medical ethics where they have mixed feelings, or religious and/or cultural conflict about a patient’s identity, choices, sexual practices, or decisions about their bodies. Medical ethics of doing no harm prescribes that situations such as this require referral to other practitioners who can provide necessary healthcare services.

Similarly, if you are uncomfortable with treating LGBTQIA+ people refer them to service providers who can attend to their healthcare needs.

😌Safer Environment

Similar to a culturally competent approach, research shows that an LGBTQIA+ affirming approach to healthcare positively benefits patients’ mental and physical health. This is because the safer environment created through an LGBTQIA+ affirming approach encourages voluntary sharing of information, allowing practitioners to design needs-based and specific treatment plans in the patient’s best interest.