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‘A little bubble of utopia’: constructions of a primary care-based pilot clinic providing gender affirming hormone therapy

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posted on 2022-07-15, 04:33 authored by A Ker, G Fraser, Theresa FlemingTheresa Fleming, C Stephenson, A da Silva Freitas, R Carroll, TK Hamilton, Antonia Lyons
The provision of gender affirming hormone therapy for transgender and non-binary people is a rapidly developing area of gender affirming healthcare. While research indicates the benefits of providing gender affirming hormone therapy through interdisciplinary primary care-based models, less is known about how service users and providers construct their understandings of affirmative approaches. In this paper, we present findings from a discourse analysis of four service users’ and four healthcare professionals’ talk about a primary care-based pilot clinic providing gender affirming hormone therapy in Aotearoa New Zealand. Participants employed notions of pathologisation, time, and agency in their talk to construct the clinic as a personal setting which gave service users time to make their own health decisions, while constructing hospitals as impersonal with lengthy wait times. The assessment-driven nature of best practice guidelines that governed clinicians’ decision-making was constructed as constraining users’ agency. Findings highlight the ongoing importance of aligning gender affirming hormone therapy with other non-disease types of healthcare, and suggest new ways for achieving this through affirmative approaches to healthcare.

History

Preferred citation

Ker, A., Fraser, G., Fleming, T., Stephenson, C., da Silva Freitas, A., Carroll, R., Hamilton, T. K. & Lyons, A. C. (2021). ‘A little bubble of utopia’: constructions of a primary care-based pilot clinic providing gender affirming hormone therapy. Health Sociology Review, 30(1), 25-40. https://doi.org/10.1080/14461242.2020.1855999

Journal title

Health Sociology Review

Volume

30

Issue

1

Publication date

2021-01-01

Pagination

25-40

Publisher

Informa UK Limited

Publication status

Published

Online publication date

2020-12-20

ISSN

1446-1242

eISSN

1839-3551

Language

en