Pharmacist perceptions about health care for the LGBTQIA+ community in Brazil

INTRODUCTION: The LGBTQIA+ community represents a sexual and gender minorities who face violence, discrimination, and stigma as a central issue, as well as various barriers in accessing health care services. Despite significant public policy advancements, the LGBTQIA+ community still faces issues with the quality of health care and a lack of attention to the unique health needs of these individuals. Pharmacists can play a key role in the health care of this community; however, there are no studies on the perceptions of pharmacists about the health care of LGBTQIA+ patients in Brazil. OBJECTIVE: To analyze the pharmacist perceptions regarding their academic training and self-perceived professional competence for providing health care to the LGBTQIA+ community in Brazil. METHODS: A cross-sectional online survey was carried out between August 2022 and February 2023 on the perceptions of pharmacist in relation to health care for the LGBTQIA+ community in all 26 states of Brazil and the Federal District. Data were collected through an online questionnaire and included 28 questions divided into four sections: informed consent form, sociodemographic characteristics, academic training and professional performance, and the last section regarding the self-perceptions of pharmacists in caring for this population. An exploratory descriptive analysis of the study variables was performed, and the results are presented as absolute and relative frequencies for categorical variables. RESULTS: A total of 261 complete and valid responses were obtained, with most of the research participants were cisgender women (n = 160, 61.3%), in the age group of 18-29 years (n = 107, 41%), self-declared white (n = 147, 56.3%), heterosexual (n = 153, 58.6%), and lived in the Southeast (n = 132, 50.6%) or Northeast (n = 90, 34.5%) region of the country. Also,||most pharmacists came from private educational institutions (n = 145, 55.6%), and that they had no formal education in the curriculum during the pharmacy program on health care of the LGBTQIA+ community (n = 256, 98.1%). Most participants have only 0-5 years of professional practice (n = 159, 60.9%), and works or worked mainly in Drug Store (n = 125, 47.9%), Hospital (n = 121, 46.4%) and/or in Primary Health Care Services (n = 71, 27.2%). Additionally, most pharmacists reported that they did provide health care to the LGBTQIA+ community (n = 161, 61.7%) at some point in your professional practice. Most participants strongly agree that the pharmacist play a key role in promoting health care for the LGBTQIA+ community (n = 213, 81.6%), but few pharmacists strongly agree that they feel qualified to deal with the health demands of a LGBTQIA+ patient (n = 55, 21.1%), and feel that they had enough clinical and/or academic training on LGBTQIA+ health during their education (n = 14, 5.4%). CONCLUSION: The findings clarify the need to address both formal training and continuous training after graduation to qualify and subsidize the pharmacist practice for trained professionals and thus reduce disparities in health care services for the LGBTQIA+ community