1. 'A little bubble of utopia': constructions of a primary care-based pilot clinic providing gender affirming hormone therapy.
- Author
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Ker, Alex, Fraser, Gloria, Fleming, Theresa, Stephenson, Cathy, da Silva Freitas, Anny, Carroll, Richard, Hamilton, Thomas K., and Lyons, Antonia C.
- Subjects
GENDER affirming care ,HOSPITALS ,HORMONE therapy ,ATTITUDES of medical personnel ,PATIENT decision making ,PRIMARY health care ,PATIENTS' attitudes ,MEDICAL protocols ,INFORMED consent (Medical law) ,PHILOSOPHY of medicine ,DISCOURSE analysis ,HEALTH ,CLINICAL competence ,HOSPITAL care ,DECISION making in clinical medicine ,OUTPATIENT services in hospitals - Abstract
The provision of gender affirming hormone therapy for transgender and non-binary people is a rapidly developing area of gender affirming healthcare. While research indicates the benefits of providing gender affirming hormone therapy through interdisciplinary primary care-based models, less is known about how service users and providers construct their understandings of affirmative approaches. In this paper, we present findings from a discourse analysis of four service users' and four healthcare professionals' talk about a primary care-based pilot clinic providing gender affirming hormone therapy in Aotearoa New Zealand. Participants employed notions of pathologisation, time, and agency in their talk to construct the clinic as a personal setting which gave service users time to make their own health decisions, while constructing hospitals as impersonal with lengthy wait times. The assessment-driven nature of best practice guidelines that governed clinicians' decision-making was constructed as constraining users' agency. Findings highlight the ongoing importance of aligning gender affirming hormone therapy with other non-disease types of healthcare, and suggest new ways for achieving this through affirmative approaches to healthcare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2021
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