The University runs a course for health professionals who teach undergraduate medical students, Education For Health Professionals, E4HP . There are two groups: the first, about 40 people, who are recently qualified and return to teach undergraduates specific hospital skills. The other group, about 20, comprised those who receive students on placements, so GPs, dentists, nurses. I was asked to run an hour session for each group on how to make their teaching more inclusive. To prepare I spoke to GPs, academics, recently graduated doctors and current students and my own experience as an gay man as patient. The main aim was to help them be inclusive of LGBT students in their teaching, to put themselves in the place of those students and not make assumptions that all their students were non-LGBT.
This was the first time the Medical School had run something like this. I was delighted with the response and the engagement in discussions, especially as I asked quite challenging questions. I ended the session, as I normally do, by asking them to discuss with a partner just one achievable thing they could do to make their teaching more LGBT inclusive.
Even though we established the usual groundrules of respect, ‘no such thing as a stupid question’, don’t worry about getting terms wrong etc, and a very strong sense in the discussions that they thought this was an important issue, not one person identified themselves as LGBT in either session. Interesting.