Focused Education of the Transgender Patient for Post-Surgical Unit

The transgender population has been identified as an underserved population at risk for negative health outcomes. Adverse encounters lead to negative patient experiences and increases the risk of poor health outcomes for transgender patients. Patient experience scores had decreased on post-surgical units at this hospital that cares for the surgical transgender patient population secondary to frequent misgendering by nursing staff.

A non-probability convenience sample of 120 surgical transgender patients (60 pre and 60 post) were surveyed with a 9-question Likert format questionnaire for this quantitative study. Questions included satisfaction with nursing care, pronoun usage by nursing, and continued health maintenance. Incorporating the Rosswurm and Larrabee Model for change to evidence-based practice, a transgender-focused program for 78 nurses was created and administered to nursing staff that work on the post- surgical units that are the base for the surgical transgender patient population. 36 patients completed the survey pre-intervention, and 32 completed the survey post-intervention.

8 out of the 9 questions showed an increase in patient satisfaction, with one question demonstrating statistically significant improvement. For the question concerning the nurse respecting the pronoun of the family member (t (62) =-2.268, p xtagstartz .05, the post-intervention group had a mean of 3.84 (SD =1.036) compared to the pre-intervention group (M = 3.18) and (SD = 1.261). Overall patient experience scores for a rating of good increased by 16%, while scores of rating for excellent increased by 5%.