A little bubble of utopia constructions of a primary care based pilot clinic providing gender affirming hormone therapy.pdf (1.6 MB)
‘A little bubble of utopia’: constructions of a primary care-based pilot clinic providing gender affirming hormone therapy
journal contribution
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 LyonsThe 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/10.1080/14461242.2020.1855999Publisher DOI
Journal title
Health Sociology ReviewVolume
30Issue
1Publication date
2021-01-01Pagination
25-40Publisher
Informa UK LimitedPublication status
PublishedOnline publication date
2020-12-20ISSN
1446-1242eISSN
1839-3551Language
enUsage metrics
Keywords
Gender affirming hormone therapyprimary health caretransgendermedicalisationdepathologisationdiscourse analysisinformed consentHealth PersonnelHormonesNew ZealandPilot ProjectsPrimary Health CareTransgender PersonsTranssexualismClinical ResearchHealth Services7.3 Management and decision making7 Management of diseases and conditionsPublic Health and Health Services not elsewhere classifiedSociology