Health Care Assistance for Trans People

Abstract

Trangender people (trans people) are those who don’t identify with the gender assigned at birth, regardless the will to align their physical appearance to their gender identity by clinical ou surgical procedures. Historically, they are presented with interaction difficulties with health care professionals, leading to barriers to care and potential risks for health issues. This study results come from an integrative review from the literature aiming to know actions and practices of health care for trans people and the existance of protocols of care for assistance to trans people health demands. The following descriptors were chosen in the virtual health library site (DeCS search): transgender people; transsexualism; protocol; health services; care ambulatory; health services for transgender people and their equivalents in portuguese. The literature search was undertaken in the CAPES, Science Direct, MEDLINE, LILACS and SciELO databases. Entry criteria were: 1) studies that described the health assistance for trans people; 2) studies published from January 2009 to May 2009 and; 3) studies published in English, Spanish or Portuguese. The research methodology included using software Mendeley and checklist PRISMA, recommended for systematic reviws and meta-analysis. The initial sample was of 471 articles. After applying entry and exclusion criteria, six articles remained for analysis. The categories that emerged from reading the articles were: surgical and hormonal interventions importance; civil name change and respect of the social name; negative health outcomes; barriers of health care. Nonetheless, the results allowed to identify some difficulties in this field, such as health system infrastructure, different sociocultural contexts, inexpressive number of health care professionals specialized or even prepared for this assistance, and lack of protocols of trans people health care applied in a consistant way. It’s proposed health education, in which work is done multidisciplinarilly, developing protocols for trans people health care that respect the chosen name and guaranty the disponibility of hormonal therapy, working health promotion actions aiming to reduce the negative outcomes.