Faculty Presentations

February 8, 2012
Michelle van Ryn, PhD, MPH

“First year medical students' implicit and explicit attitudes toward GLBT individuals”

Gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) individuals are an identified under-served population and on average report lower satisfaction with health care. One explanation for this may be clinicians’ implicit (automatic, unconscious) and explicit (conscious) attitudes toward GLBT patients. Such attitudes toward patients have been shown to systematically influence clinician-patient communication and clinical decision making. However, few studies have examined clinicians’ or trainees’ implicit and explicit attitudes towards GLBT patients, and very little is known about the extent and nature of negative attitudes among medical students toward GLBT patients. Studying these attitudes in first-year medical students is particularly important because schools can implement programs to reduce negative attitudes at this stage in career development. Such an intervention could potentially improve physician-patient communication and quality of care for this important under-served population. This study aims to fill that gap in our knowledge base by using data collected from 4764 first-year medical students attending a stratified random sample of 50 medical schools to: 1) assess implicit and explicit attitudes toward people who are gay or lesbian and 2) describe the bivariate and multivariate predictors of such attitudes.