Program Directors' and Athletic Training Students' Educational Experiences Regarding Patient-Centered Care and Transgender Patient Care

Context: The United States transgender patient population often suffers from insufficient health care and faces barriers to obtaining health care. Understanding the current classroom education provided in professional athletic training programs related to patient-centered and transgender patient care is necessary to foster improvements to the education of future health care providers. Objective: To explore the education, comfort, and experience of professional athletic training students and program directors (PDs) on patient-centered care (PCC) and transgender patient care. Design: Cross-sectional survey. Setting: Online survey. Patients or Other Participants: A total of 74 PDs of Commission on Accreditation of Athletic Training Education-accredited professional athletic training programs (age = 46 ± 9 years) and 452 athletic training students (age = 23 ± 3 years) responded to the survey. Data Collection and Analysis: Two surveys were created from literature and were reviewed by a committee of content experts. Participants were sent links to their respective survey in March 2020. Surveys contained questions on demographic information, PCC, and transgender patient care. Data were analyzed descriptively with follow-up X[superscript 2] analyses comparing athletic training students' comfort and competence between those who learned and did not learn about transgender patient care. Results: Most PDs reportedly felt comfortable (98.6%, n = 73) and competent (94.6%, n = 70) teaching PCC. Half (50% n = 37/74) of PDs include transgender health care in their program's curriculum but lacked competence (37.8%, n = 28) in teaching. All students felt comfortable (100%, n = 452) and competent (98.7%, n = 446) practicing PCC, but only 12.4% (n = 54) reported practicing it during clinical education. Less than half (43.1%, n = 195/452) of students learned about transgender patient care, yet most (78.3%, n = 354) felt comfortable but lacked competence (41.8% n = 189). Conclusions: Few students reportedly practice PCC during clinical education. Both groups perceived deficiencies in competence related to transgender patient care. We suggest PDs teach transgender health care in their curriculum and seek professional development to create meaningful educational experiences.