Journal of Medical Education and Curricular Development (07/31/23) Mitnick, Sarah; Goldhammer, Hilary; Thompson, Julie; et al.
Researchers evaluated the annual international Advancing Excellence in Transgender Health (AETH) continuing professional development conference, which aims to increase health providers' capability for delivering optimal gender-affirming medical and behavioral healthcare for transgender and gender diverse (TGD) people. The conference seeks to teach clinicians TGD patients' routine primary medical and behavioral healthcare needs; culturally responsive communication and settings; and gender-affirming medical care. Also prioritized is supporting healthcare teams in creating a patient-centered and integrated model of care that solicits, values and affirms gender diversity. Three co-directors lead AETH in partnership with four programmatic and administrative personnel, and most team members have an experiential background as TGD people. The authors assessed participatory outcomes of the conference between 2015 and 2022, which engaged 2,677 unique learners in total. Of them, 2,505 attended AETH once and 172 went at least twice. Physicians, nurses, nurse practitioners, social workers, physician assistants, psychologists and counselors were among the most frequent attendees at the conference. In all, 3,296 unique users completed watching at least one online recorded AETH session between 2020 and 2022. The researchers noted participants found the conference quality highly satisfactory across the board, including for meeting learning objectives, quality of speaker presentations and relevance to practice. More than 99% of users also felt AETH content was "evidence-based" and "fair, balanced and free of commercial bias." Participants expressed plans to deploy new information or skills; develop or amend protocols, policies and/or procedures; and search for additional information. The researchers concluded that adapting the AETH model for global continuing education in TGD clinical care could involve veteran gender-affirming care organizations enlisting local subject matter experts to enable "culturally specific tailoring of content, representation of local perspectives and priorities, and local professional community building."
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