The Nurse's Role in Gender Identification

Abstract

Individuals identifying as gender non-conforming are members of a minority culture underserved by the current lack of guidelines for nursing care. This project developed due to a practice gap at the public health clinic with the nurse’s ability to provide care to gender non-conforming patients. The purpose of this project was to work with nurses at a rural health clinic to provide culturally competent, holistic care to individuals who identify as gender non-conforming. The PICOT question that guided this project was: For public health nurses in a rural health clinic (P), will a quality improvement project aimed at providing education related to the care of gender non-conforming patients and implementation of gender self-identification (I) improve the nurses perceived cultural competency and identification of transgender individuals (0) compared to current practice (C) over 6 to 10 weeks (T)? Methodology was a quality improvement project guided by Campinha-Bacote’s theory of cultural competency. The project assumed nurses would lack competency and be willing to participate in the project. Limitations included the absence of nursing specific data, small sample size, and rural location. The Inventory for Assessing the Process of Cultural Competence Revised survey was given before and after project implementation. Results showed increased levels of cultural competency among nurses after project completion. The small sample size eliminated any statistical significance. This project has improved nurse’s ability to provide culturally competent, holistic care to gender nonconforming patients and implementation at other health clinics within the State of Michigan is anticipated.