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Students role-play clinical visits with trans individuals to ‘make medical offices safer’

The University of Connecticut Medical School is hosting transgender individuals as practice patients this month to train students in providing “gender-affirming” care.

Groups of students will role-play a doctor’s visit with trans-identifying individuals, practicing how to ask for their pronouns and offer care, The Register Citizen reported.

Afterward, the students and the “patients” will review the interactions together, discussing ways to improve the experience.

One of the “patients,” Dylan Bachmanm, “shares his health care experiences with the medical students at the University of Connecticut to show them how they can foster a safe clinical environment for trans patients,” according to The Citizen.

The outlet also states that Bachmanm works at the school “to diversify the types of patients students work with before they head into the field to foster a more inclusive workforce.”

Bachmanm tells the students about “his” personal healthcare experiences to “make medical offices safer for all minority populations,” the outlet reported.

“After that first session with my first students, I left feeling like I have maybe made a difference for other trans people and maybe other bigger-bodied people,” Bachmanm said.

“But also, I feel like I opened up a good communication channel for these students that I don’t think people have unless they have the person who’s going through it to talk to them,” Bachmanm said.

The initiative came from the school’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee and former program director Sandra Scippa.

Scippa said students typically work with retirees within the community, but the school is working to diversify the kinds of patients students practice with.

Administrative Curriculum Coordinator Teresa Sapieha-Yanchak said the school needed 10 transgender participants for the “gender-affirming training” but recieved 40 inquiries, CT Insider reported.

“It’s so nice to have people that want to do this and want to help students understand and be comfortable and get the quality care that they deserve because there’s so many people that had poor treatment that they want the students to do better,” Sapieha-Yanchak said.

UConn Health’s website states that the school “is strongly committed to providing compassionate, comprehensive services to members of the transgender and gender nonconforming community.”

MORE: ‘Gender-affirming therapy’ is not beneficial, pediatrics group concludes

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