Scientific data regarding the attitudes of health professionals indicates that it is not automatically easy for many professionals to provide adequate and empathetic care for transgender people. The question is why?

A survey of trainers from the SWITCH project carried out a week ago indicates that the difficulties faced by professionals are different but also similar in Spain, Italy and Czech Republic.

The survey indicates that the difficulties of professionals are related to their lack of knowledge on the subject, since in most studies of careers in the health field, the gender of the people is not included as a category of analysis and training.

Experts identify “Poor knowledge about TI people real needs”, “Poor Knowledge and experience about it”, “lack of deep knowledge”, or even “ignorance of needs of TI” as one of the central themes in all three countries. In this category they also mention the lack of experience and improvisation.

In a more psychological and interpersonal dimension, a lack of understanding is identified, sometimes professionals doesn’t know how to ask. But many times there is a very low awareness of the issue and deep prejudices, reaching the situation of acting in a prejudicial way, but not being aware of it.

On the other hand, they identified the lack of a network as a structural difficulty and the need to learn as a priority.

This analysis, in addition to confirming what some studies have already shown, shows the need to reinforce the training of health personnel in content that allows them to understand person-centered care from intersectional and holistic perspectives. And on the other hand, it reinforces the idea of how much it is necessary to strengthen training spaces to train and apply prosocial communication that favors self-knowledge processes so that professionals know themselves, and learn to manage their own prejudices.