Do the attitudes and practices of Australian pharmacists reflect a need for education and training to provide care for people who are transgender?

Chaudhary, Swapna, Lindsay, Daniel, Ray, Robin, and Glass, Beverley D. (2024) Do the attitudes and practices of Australian pharmacists reflect a need for education and training to provide care for people who are transgender? International Journal of Pharmacy Practice, 32 (1). pp. 61-68.

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Abstract

Background: Many transgender and gender diverse (TGD) people access care through community pharmacy in Australia. However, there is limited information available about the role of Australian pharmacists in providing care for TGD people.

Objective: To explore the attitudes, practices, and training needs of pharmacists in the provision of care for TGD people in Australia.

Method: Pharmacists Australia-wide were invited to participate in an online survey through Facebook, e-newsletters of pharmacy organizations and a professional pharmacy journal. Quantitative data were analysed for descriptive and inferential statistics. A Fisher exact test was used to investigate associations between two variables. Results with P value <0.05 were considered statistically significant. Content analysis was used to analyse data from free-text responses.

Result: Of the 169 respondents, the majority were female (75.1%), aged below 40 years (74%) and with less than 10 years of working experience as a pharmacist (58%). Although 95% of the sample agreed that they had an important role in the provision of care for TGD people, only 29.6% were confident about their knowledge of pharmacotherapeutic treatments for gender affirmation. Only 2.4% had received education about TGD care at university, and only 5.3% received any TGD healthcare training over the past 5 years.

Conclusion: Although pharmacists had a positive attitude and recognized their role in TGD care, they expressed a lack of confidence in their knowledge to be a barrier to providing quality care. Most recommended the need for more education about TGD healthcare in pharmacy curricula and continuous professional education activities.

Item ID: 81780
Item Type: Article (Research - C1)
ISSN: 2042-7174
Keywords: pharmacy; healthcare; non-binary; professional education; gender diverse; LGBTQIA+
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Copyright Information: © The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Date Deposited: 14 Feb 2024 22:56
FoR Codes: 32 BIOMEDICAL AND CLINICAL SCIENCES > 3214 Pharmacology and pharmaceutical sciences > 321403 Clinical pharmacy and pharmacy practice @ 100%
SEO Codes: 20 HEALTH > 2003 Provision of health and support services > 200302 Community health care @ 60%
20 HEALTH > 2005 Specific population health (excl. Indigenous health) > 200599 Specific population health (excl. Indigenous health) not elsewhere classified @ 40%
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