Medical Students Push For More LGBT Health Training To Address Disparities
One in 5 LGBT adults has avoided medical care for fear of discrimination, according to a recent survey, and 80 percent of physicians surveyed say they feel "not competent" to treat LGBT patients.
When Sarah Spiegel was in her first year at New York Medical College in 2016, she sat in a lecture hall watching a BuzzFeed video about what it's like to be an intersex or a transgender person.
"It was a good video, but it felt inadequate for the education of a class of medical students, soon to be doctors," says Spiegel, now in her third year of medical school.
The video, paired with a 30-minute lecture on sexual orientation, was the only LGBT-focused information Spiegel and her fellow classmates received in their foundational course.
"It's not adequate," Spiegel remembers thinking. By her second year, after she became president of the school's LGBT Advocacy in Medicine Club, she rallied a group of her peers
