Out of the Closet: Nurse Practitioner Faculty Knowledge, Comfort and Willingness to Incorporate LGBTQ2SA Content into the Curriculum.

Background: To improve the health of LGBTQ2SA individuals, nurse practitioners need to increase their knowledge related to the health needs of sexual and gender minorities. However, nurse practitioners often feel unprepared as a result of a lack of content in their educational training. In order to better understand the current state of nurse practitioner education around sexual and gender minorities, it is critical to assess educational preparedness and faculty knowledge teaching the content. The purpose of this study was to assess the knowledge and experience of nurse practitioner faculty in Ontario around LGBTQ2SA health and their comfort level teaching this material in the nurse practitioner program.

Methods: This quantitative descriptive study used purposeful sampling to recruit faculty from the Ontario Primary Health Care Nurse Practitioner Program. Data was collected using a modified survey administered on the Opinio platform.

Results: Twenty-three individuals completed the study. Most participants felt that LGBTQ2SA health content was important, but rarely or never taught. The most frequently identified strategies to promote faculty readiness to integration of LGBTQ2SA health topics into the curriculum included faculty development seminars, reviewing curriculum to identify gaps and partnering and utilizing LGBTQ2SA specific agencies as clinical sites.

Conclusions: Results indicate that barriers exist at the faculty level which may limit the extent to which LGBTQ2SA health topics are incorporated into the curriculum. Supporting faculty to develop their knowledge and comfort with this topic will allow them to better educate students to care for LGBTQ2SA clients.