Survey finds nurse bias against transgender people

Nurses are more biased against transgender people than people who are not health professionals, according to a study published last week in the journal Heliyon. A questionnaire administered before and after participants took the Harvard Implicit Association Test revealed health care professionals are less likely to know transgender people personally and nurses are more likely to conflate sex and gender identity. The researchers compared the responses of 11,996 nurses and 22,443 other health care professionals and compared them to 177,810 responses of non-health care professionals; all respondents took the survey from 2020 to 2022. The authors call for “additional trans-affirming care training” for nursing and medical students. (Newswise news release, 11/3/23)