The NYU Rory Meyers College of Nursing will launch an elective course dedicated to LGBTQ+ health this fall.
The undergraduate elective’s aim is to prepare nursing students to provide culturally inclusive care. It was designed and will be taught by Jeff Day, clinical assistant professor at the school. Students will learn about LGBTQ+ health issues, regulations and addressing discrimination.
“It is rare for nursing schools to offer coursework dedicated to the health and well-being of LGBTQ+ individuals, despite the unique issues they face and growing interest from students,” Day said in an announcement. “Our goal is to empower new nurses to provide care for people across sexual orientations and gender expressions that promotes health and improves patient outcomes.”
The idea for the course began when several students approached Day and expressed an interest in learning more on the subject. LGBTQ+ individuals face barriers to care including stigma and discrimination. They are also more vulnerable to substance use, suicide and sexually transmitted infections. “If we’re not aware of that and not asking the right questions of our patients, then we’re doing them a disservice,” Day told Fierce Healthcare.
In general, nurses get more face time with patients than physicians do. “We are in a very privileged position as nurses,” Day said. “I consider it a really sacred space.” Yet nurses get little training on LGBTQ+ health.
As part of students’ training, Day hopes to coordinate with the LGBTQ+ patient liaison at NYU Langone Health and send his students to meet patients in a real-world clinical setting. One of Day’s long-term goals is to also offer a clinical simulation, where students will be faced with various scenarios acted out by trained individuals. Students will also take an assessment at the start of the course that helps unearth hidden biases, based on the ADDRESSING framework.
The elective was piloted this spring with 27 students, and its curriculum was put through several committees, Day said. To build the material, Day read literature and referenced the National LGBTQIA+ Health Education Center as a resource. He also learned a lot by practice—caring for trans patients as a nurse practitioner with the Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery at Mount Sinai’s New York Eye and Ear Infirmary.
Though ideally, Day would like to see this type of content embedded in the entire nursing curriculum, the program is, like all others, constrained by time and state-mandated requirements. “It just doesn't leave a lot of time for content that is specific to LGBTQ+ health,” Day said. For the time being, an elective course can help fill in gaps in training. Day hopes the training will equip students to go on to practice in states where there is less training and to be experts in providing gender-affirming care.