Health care providers' comfort with and barriers to care of transgender youth

Purpose: To explore providers' clinical experiences, comfort, and confidence with and barriers to providing care to transgender youth.

Methods: An online survey was administered to members of the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine and the Pediatric Endocrine Society with items querying about clinical exposure to transgender youth, familiarity with and adherence to existing clinical practice guidelines, perceived barriers to providing transgender-related care, and comfort and confidence with providing transgender-related care. The response rate was 21.9% (n = 475).

Results: Of the respondents, 66.5% had provided care to transgender youth, 62.4% felt comfortable with providing transgender medical therapy, and 47.1% felt confident in doing so. Principal barriers to provision of transgender-related care were lack of the following: training, exposure to transgender patients, available qualified mental health providers, and insurance reimbursement.

Conclusions: This study suggests that more training in transgender-related care, available qualified mental health providers, and insurance reimbursement for transgender-related care are needed.