IMPE Abstracts

Introduction: Gender preference is increasingly more common in our society and in medical general practices. This makes necessary for current and future medical professionals to have up to date, non-biased information so that they can assist transitioning patients with their physical and mental wellbeing.

Objective: To explore knowledge and opinions of future medical professionals about transsexuality, and the evolution along their medical studies.

Method: An “ad hoc” survey was performed in 2022. External validation by experts was made. Results were analyzed using trend lines to determine the evolution of each opinion over time.

Results: A total of 267 medecine students (78% female) responded. The respondents who know the terms cis, trans and fluid gender are 87.3%, 99.6% and 74.9% respectively. 35.6% claim to handle concepts such as sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and gender role with ease. 3% define transsexuality as a psychiatric disorder. 3.4% consider that social discrimination against trans people does not exist and believes it is an invention of the LGTBI lobby. 76% agree that treatment should cover all spheres of the individual, while 12.4% consider that the National Health System should not cover any treatment. 16.5% choose the alternative that affirms the need for all trans people to be assessed for mental health. Most of the students (76%) do not know what drugs can be used for the transition. 7.5% have obtained information during their training while the rest on their own initiative. Active struggle for the rights of these people tends to go down as the training progresses and the trend line of those who do not agree with their demands goes up. Over the years, the trend of the option that assesses the need for a medical diagnosis to be considered a trans person has increased, as well as the need in all cases for a mental health assessment of these people.

Conclusions: A relatively high percentage of the respondents are not fluent in the terms related to this topic and would not be able to help a trans person in the exercise of their profession. The students are not very involved in the fight for the rights of these people, even denying the situation of vulnerability they suffer. A group of future medical professionals are unaware of the social and clinical situation of transsexuality, who still consider it an illness. It is necessary for universities to provide training on transsexuality.