Effectiveness of an Educational Workshop on Dental Hygiene Students’ Competence and Comfort in Treating Transgender Patients

Background: Transgender individuals face barriers to health care, such as harassment, violence, and the refusal of care. Current literature shows a lack of instruction about caring for sexual minority patients in dental and allied dental education programs, which contributes to the barriers to care for this population. Objective: The purpose of this quasi-experimental study was to determine the effectiveness of an educational workshop on dental hygiene student competence and comfort levels in treating transgender patients. Methodology Dental hygiene students’ competence and comfort levels in treating transgender individuals were evaluated using an adapted version of the Assessing Medical Attitudes Toward Transgender Care survey. The researcher collected primary data from a convenience sample of 45 dental hygiene students who attended an educational workshop about caring for transgender individuals. Data were collected at Week 1 (baseline) and Week 6 (post-workshop). Results: The researcher used the Wilcoxon signed-rank test to analyze the data. The results showed a statistically significant increase from pretest to posttest in competence (1.6667 - 3.0000; z = 5.373) and comfort (3.0000 - 3.8000; z = 4.799) scores after attending the educational workshop, p\u3c.05. Conclusions: The findings of this study provide evidence that suggests education about transgender health care increases competence and comfort levels among dental hygiene students. Educators should consider including this content in dental and allied dental education curricula. When creating and revising dental hygiene curricula, educators and policymakers should ensure this content is included in suffcient scope and depth to prepare graduates to care for this population.https://jdc.jefferson.edu/sexandgenderhealth/1006/thumbnail.jp