Transgender Medicine And Physician Care

A recent study suggests that a transgender person walking into an endocrinologist’s office to begin medical transition has less than a two-thirds chance of receiving that treatment. Published in Endocrine Practice, the study found that only 63% of endocrinology providers at a 2015 conference were willing to provide hormone therapy for transgender patients. Half hadn’t even read the Endocrine Society’s 2009 readily available guidelines for that treatment. However, there was a silver lining: 70% of providers under age 40 had read the guidelines. If that’s indicative a broader trend, the next generation of endocrinologists could change the map for transgender health care. Joshua Safer is the director of Boston University’s endocrinology fellowship program and a spokesperson for the Endocrine Society. He told Fusion, “Transgender medical care is not a part of conventional medical education and has not been a part of conventional medicine ever." Change will have to come from the bottom up, too, and that means training new students. Studies that Safer has co-authored have shown that even “simple” changes in instruction can significantly boost medical students’ and residents’ willingness to treat transgender patients.