Improving transgender health education for future doctors.

We wholeheartedly agree with the assertion, in Stroumsa’s excellent and comprehensive review of transgender health, that future physicians must be trained to meet the unique health needs of the more than one million gender-variant people in the United States. 1 To move toward this goal, the first step at our medical school was to understand student knowledge, attitudes, and skills related to transgender health and to assess the impact of an educational intervention. A new lecture on transgender health was given to medical students (n = 139) during their required family medicine clerkship. Upon finishing the clerkship year and prior to graduation, these students completed a 26-item survey assessing transgender health knowledge, attitudes, and skills. A similar survey was completed upon graduation by students in a more senior cohort who had not received the lecture during their clerkships (n = 145). Self-reported competency items were rated on a 5-point Likert scale, and summary scores were created if internal consistency estimates were adequate (Cronbach a >0 .7). The propensity score or probability that a participant would have attended the lecture was estimated using a multivariate logistic regression model incorporating demographic and attendance variables. The effect of the transgender health lecture on knowledge, attitudes, and skills was examined in a regression model adjusting for the propensity score. The survey response rate was 72%