LGBT people are more likely to suffer from a variety of health problems, including mental health issues, and are also more likely to experience disparities in the medical care they receive. It has been pointed out that this is due to a lack of knowledge and experience among Japanese medical professionals due to insufficient education regarding gender diversity.
A research group led by Tokyo Jikei University School of Medicine has developed a Japanese-language scale, the ``Japanese version of LGBT-DOCSS,'' to evaluate the clinical skills of medical professionals when treating LGBT patients. Several scales for this purpose already exist overseas, and their reliability and validity have been established, but until now there have been no evaluation scales available in Japanese.
In scale development, we first translated the LGBT-DOCSS (The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Development of Clinical Skills Scale), which was developed in the United States, using a scientifically valid method, and used it to provide information to medical professionals. After conducting interviews, we created a Japanese version of the scale that expressed the contents in an easy-to-understand manner.
Next, in order to verify the reliability and validity of the created scale, we conducted an online questionnaire survey among medical professionals. From the 381 valid responses obtained, we identified other scales that are considered to be correlated with the Japanese version of LGBT-DOCSS, other scales that are not correlated with the Japanese version, and research participants' age, sexual orientation, and gender identity. We evaluated the relationship between these and scores on the Japanese version of the LGBT-DOCSS.
As a result, we confirmed that the Japanese version of LGBT-DOCSS has sufficient reliability and validity. The original version of the scale had a three-factor structure: attitude, basic knowledge, and clinical preparation. Among ``preparation,'' ``clinical training'' was added as an independent factor, resulting in four factors. Younger people had significantly higher scores on Attitude, while older people had significantly higher scores on Clinical Preparedness. Compared to LGBT people, non-LGBT people scored lower on the overall scale, but those who believed they had LGBT colleagues, friends, relatives, or family members tended to score relatively high.
In the future, the Japanese version of LGBT-DOCSS is expected to be useful for self-evaluation of medical professionals caring for LGBT patients and for the development of effective education and training programs.
