Clinical Question
The protection of the rights of the patients under the healthcare environment is one of the current issues affecting nurses. The lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) is one of the most discriminated groups of patients. According to Irwin, LGBT patients still face discrimination within the healthcare system of the contemporary society, despite the growing tolerance towards them over the last three decades. Some nurses and other healthcare professionals ignore protecting the rights of LGBT patients due to their homophobic and heterosexist attitudes. It is, therefore, necessary for nurses to understand the precise roles they should play towards protecting the rights of their LGBT patients know from best essays sites.
The percentage of LGBT patients who face discrimination or human rights violation from nurses is still high. International studies report that between 31% and 89% of LGBT respondents have suffered discrimination from nurses and other healthcare professionals, and they link their negative experiences to their sexuality. Such statistics indicate that many representatives of LGBT group still suffer discrimination because nurses do not protect their rights.
PICOT question: Among the LGBT patients (P), how effective is respecting the rights of the clients (I) versus discriminating them (C) in promoting better experiences and results (O) during treatment (T)?
The purpose of the paper is to explain the responsibilities of nurses towards defending the rights of the LGBT patients. The paper draws its findings from evidence-based and journal-published studies. Therefore, nurses can rely on it for ideas on how and why they should safeguard the fundamental rights of the LGBT patients.
Levels of Evidence
The questions asked during the surveys are strategic towards obtaining data on the role that nurses play in protecting the rights of LGBT clients, the possible challenges, and the ways of improving their responsibility. The study by Brenan, Barnsteiner, Siantz, Cotter, & Everett answered some questions about the experiences and needs of the LGBT patients in relation to nursing. The questions in this area are qualitative, as they study data on the opinions of nurses and LGBT patients in regard to the given topic. The studies make their conclusions on the percentage of qualitative data obtained from the respondents.
Numerous studies provide information related to the question of nurses’ role in defending the rights of patients. The research by Irwin, who is a registered nurse, shows that intervening in the problems of homophobia and heterosexism that LGBT patients face is a complex process. Most assumptions of the nurses about heterosexism and LGBT remain uncorrected. One of the reasons for it is that the homosexual or LGBT staffs, who could take the focal position in advocating for the rights of this group of patients, fear that they will suffer discrimination, if they start supporting their position about issues affecting the clients during healthcare delivery. Nurses find it tricky to challenge human rights violation against the LGBT patients because they fear that the other staff members will discredit such decisions. They believe that talking in favor of the LGBT clients is evidence of being gay or lesbian. Therefore, they choose to remain silent about the discriminatory treatment of the group of patients. Irwin’s study is a cohort analysis of the findings from various international studies on the issue of LGBT rights and their violation in the healthcare system. Putting the studies together, Irwin states that many international researchers have found that between 31% and 89% of the LGBT clients have complained of negative attitudes of nurses and other healthcare professionals, and they cite their sexual orientations as the sources of discrimination. 57% of the patients cite that they experience moderate homophobic attitudes from the nurses, while 20% say that the bias is severe ‘. The evidence from Irwin’s study shows that nurses and other professionals in the healthcare environment do not respect or uphold the rights of the LGBT patients, e.g. non-discrimination and equal treatment rights.
The study by Brennan et al. ‘ shows that many nurses do not understand their role of protecting LGBT people from discrimination and other forms of rights denials as they are not aware of the problem. The scholars indicate that nurses should be educated about the specialized treatment or approaches they should use when dealing with the LGBT patients. They should also understand how to communicate with the patients’. The curricular used in training nurses should incorporate discussions about the tactical methods they should utilize as a way of ensuring the group does not receive negative treatment or they do not formulate negative opinions about LGBT people. It is clear from the research that there is a huge problem related to the role of nurses in upholding the rights of the LGBT category of people.
Search Strategy
The search strategy used to locate the research articles included visiting online library databases, such as CINAHAL, Elsevier, MEDLINE, EBSCOHOST, and ERIC. I also used the Google Scholar to find the articles. The key words that I used in the investigation included ‘Patient rights,’ ‘LGBT challenges’ and ‘Nurse Roles.’ I combined the words to formulate the sentences that I used in the search. I observed that when I typed the phrase ‘LGBT challenges,’ I found plenty of articles, but most of them did not focus on the issue of their rights in the nursing environment. Combining the phrases, for example, ‘Nurses’ roles in the protection of the rights of LGBT patients’ gave me articles that were highly relevant. Therefore, I judged the articles by considering the peer reviewed journal sources that were published within ten years as more appropriate than the non-reviewed and old ones. I used the selection procedure to choose two publications.