Safe space.
Let’s face it. When you’re not feeling well, it is not the time to justify or explain how you live your life. What you want is someone to understand you before you even mention a symptom or ailment. I think the NHS does a stellar job of providing high level care when people need it most. The problem lies in the more subtle, nuanced aspects of healthcare that only comes when fully understanding someone’s context. In most GP settings, there simply isn’t the time. As a GP myself, I often feel like there are aspects of peoples’ lives that I haven’t fully appreciated. Worse still, is the situation where someone feels they need to actively hide who they are, due to worry it will negatively affect their experience.
So how can we do better? It starts with you. By fully understanding who you are and how you live your life, only then can more relevant treatment recommendations be made. And I believe one of the biggest groups of people that remain misunderstood are those from the LGBT+ community.
Survey data shows that people from our community still remain discriminated against when accessing healthcare. The 2017 National LGBT survey showed that approximately 1 in 6 people had a negative experience because of their sexual orientation when accessing public healthcare, and almost 2 in 5 because of their gender identity.
So on top of feeling unwell, many people have to then additionally cope with feelings of negativity, just for being who they are. This is what I want Pride Clinic UK to change. By providing a safe space, free of judgement, with experienced clinicians who have worked in the NHS, and themselves of the LGBT+ community, or allies, I want every person who uses our service to feel empowered in their decisions about healthcare.
When understanding someone’s context becomes the aim, it then follows that appropriate and effective treatments for illness become a lot easier to recommend, and this is what I envisage Pride Clinic UK would do.
And when you know this service is designed specifically for you, then I believe it can lead to a sense of validation and self-empowerment, which then hopefully further leads to the likelihood of treatments being effective.