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Social Psychology
Paidéia
2020, Vol. 30, e3034.doi:https://doi.org/10.1590/1982-4327e3034
ISSN 1982-4327 (online version)
1
Training Needs Measure for Health Care of the LGBT+ Public
Willian Roger Dullius1
Lara Barros Martins1
Abstract: Inadequate and ineective care provided by health professionals to the LGBT+ public can cause countless damages to
those who demand care. An alternative to improve the service provided is to promote training actions for professionals that should
be initiated by the Training Needs Analysis (TNA). This study aimed at building and validating, theoretically and statistically, a TNA
instrument for health professionals related to humanized care for LGBT+ individuals for the Brazilian context. The data collection
was done in two stages, in person and virtually, and had 449 professionals who responded to the TNA instrument built. The data was
analyzed by means of content analysis, exploratory factors and internal consistency. The scale presented a uni-factorial structure with
evidence of validity and reliability, and can be used as a diagnostic tool to verify the gaps in the competence of health professionals
in the care of LGBT+ people.
Keywords: health professionals, personnel training, factor analysis, minority groups
Medida de Necessidades de Treinamento para Atenção em Saúde ao Público LGBT+
Resumo: A assistência inadequada e inecaz proporcionada por prossionais de saúde ao público LGBT+ pode causar inúmeros
danos àqueles que demandam cuidados. Uma alternativa para melhorar o atendimento prestado é promover ações de capacitação aos
prossionais que devem ser iniciadas pela Análise de Necessidades de Treinamento (ANT). O presente estudo teve como objetivo
construir e validar, teórica e estatisticamente, um instrumento de ANT destinado aos prossionais de saúde relacionado ao atendimento
humanizado ao indivíduo LGBT+ para o contexto brasileiro. A coleta de dados foi feita em duas etapas, presencial e virtualmente, e
contou com 449 prossionais que responderam ao instrumento de ANT construído. Os dados foram analisados mediante análises de
conteúdo, fatoriais exploratórias e de consistência interna. A escala apresentou uma estrutura unifatorial com evidências de validade
e conabilidade, podendo ser utilizada como ferramenta de diagnóstico para vericar as lacunas de competências dos prossionais de
saúde quanto ao atendimento às pessoas LGBT+.
Palavras-chave: prossionais da saúde, treinamento de pessoal, análise fatorial, grupos minoritários
Medida de Necesidades de Entrenamiento para la Atención en Salud al
público LGBT+
Resumen: La atención inadecuada e inecaz que brindan los profesionales de la salud al público LGBT+ puede causar numerosos
daños a quienes la necesitan. Una alternativa para mejorar el servicio prestado es promover la capacitación de profesionales, que
debe ser iniciada por el Análisis de Necesidades de Entrenamiento (ANE). El estudio describe los procedimientos de construcción
y validación, teórica y estadística, de un instrumento de ANE destinado a los profesionales de la salud que trabajan con población
LGBT+. La recogida de datos fue realizada en dos etapas, presencial y virtualmente, y contó con 449 profesionales que respondieron
al instrumento de ANE construido. Los datos fueron analizados mediante análisis de contenido, factoriales exploratorios y de
consistencia interna. La escala presentó una estructura unifactorial con evidencias de validez y abilidad, pudiendo ser utilizada como
herramienta de diagnóstico para vericar las deciencias de competencias de los profesionales de la salud cuanto al atendimiento a
las personas LGBT+.
Palavras clave: profesionales de la salud, entrenador personal, análisis factorial, grupos minoritarios
1IMED, Passo Fundo-RS, Brazil
Support: Article derived from the master’s thesis of the rst author under
the supervision of the second, defended in 2018, in the Stricto Sensu
Postgraduate Program in Psychology at IMED. The study did not receive
nancial support.
Correspondence address: Willian Roger Dullius. IMED. Escola de
Saúde, Psicologia. Rua Senador Pinheiro, 304, Passo Fundo-RS, Brazil.
CEP 99.070-220. E-mail: rogerdullius@gmail.com
Currently there is a high demand for mental health care by
non-heteronormative individuals (Müller, 2013). Reports from
LGBT+ individuals (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transvestite
and the + sign for the other gender names: Transgender,
Queer and Intersex) indicate that they perceive a dierence
in the way they are cared for by health professionals, who
provide assistance in a negative manner due to their sexual
Paidéia, 30, e3034
2
orientation, for example, incorrectly use their pronoun and
social name, have disrespectful attitudes, do not consider the
patient’s opinion, and decisions are made exclusively by the
professionals themselves (Alpert, Cichoskikelly, & Fox, 2017;
Costa et al., 2018; Dowshen et al., 2016; Müller, 2013). From
the point of view of the LGBT+ public, when seeking health
services, they perceive: unpreparedness of professionals to
deal with the gay public; use of jokes and debauches; impact
on the eyes; amazement at the practices among lesbians;
discriminatory gynecological care; lack of professional
training; lack of attention to the LGBT+ population, among
others (Carvalho & Philippi, 2013).
Such failures are related to the educational system
performed in the academies, which fail to teach future
professionals in the care of sexual minorities, and there is
no continued education on the subject (Beagan, Fredericks,
& Bryson, 2015; Müller, 2013; Paradiso & Lally, 2018).
Consequently, there is insecurity in providing care due
to a fragmented teaching and support base (Paradiso &
Lally, 2018). In this respect, the literature suggests that
the curriculum base should be better elaborated and more
research in the medical area related to this subject be
developed (Zelin et al., 2018).
Therefore, curricula should include the mastery of
clinical skills, knowledge, and attitudes that result in the
reduction of the health care gap for the LGBT+ public, since
there are indications of failures in the education of doctors,
nurses and other health professionals who should equip them
to promote the health care of these individuals (Dubin et al.,
2018; Talan, Drake, Glick, Claiborn, & Seal, 2017).
One way to minimize such embarrassing situations is by
oering training for health professionals to improve care for
LGBT+ patients. Thus, this situation calls attention to the
need for qualication on sexual minorities and development
of skills in assistance in this area by professionals, since
the mental health of this population is weakened due to the
numerous negative factors they face daily by the lgbtphobia
present in society (Paradiso & Lally, 2018).
When looking at (continuing) sexual and gender minority
education, health professionals often have a considerable
gap in specic skills to provide care to them eciently,
due mainly to the lack of training in this regard. In order to
account for the needs of all publics in the health sector, it is
a priority to develop researches that glimpse the opinion and
health of these people so that there is continuous training
of these professionals, in those essential competencies not
dominated by them, so that there is quality and eectiveness
in the assistance performance (Alpert et al., 2017; Carabez
et al., 2015; Moe & Sparkman, 2015; Müller, 2013).
Thus, the acquisition and consolidation of skills by health
professionals, through training and continuing education
throughout their careers, guides a humanized and quality
assistance to those in need of health care.
Training needs analysis (TNA) is one of the steps
that constitute the Training, Development and Education
(TD&E) system of people, which has the role of evaluating
the existing or decient skills in a population that can be
trained (Meneses, Zerbini, & Silva, 2010). TNA provides
verication of information regarding the technical and/or
behavioral skills that need to be transmitted to people, in
addition to dierentiating each individual in their degree of
knowledge and need to receive training in a given topic. Such
analysis is carried out using an indicator, the GPI - General
Priority Index, which identies training priorities, that is,
those activities or behaviors that are important for the good
performance of the function at work, but little dominated by
the individual (Borges-Andrade & Lima, 1983).
The need for training, therefore, refers to competencies
(set of knowledge, skills and attitudes - KSAs) that are
fundamental to the position, but which have not yet been
developed, consolidated or need to be recycled to ensure
competent performance. This includes, beyond the skills,
the motivation and conditions to perform the activities at
work. Performance problems caused by lack of motivation or
conditions do not congure themselves as training needs, and
need to be solved through other strategies and interventions
(Meneses & Zerbini, 2009).
By systematically identifying divergences between actual
performances, manifested by individuals, and those required
by the work unit or organization, decision making on the
contents and skills important for a good performance of the
daily occupational role at work is optimized. Therefore, TNA
aims to assess performance problems caused exclusively by
competence gaps, and then propose learning solutions, via
educational actions (Meneses & Zerbini, 2009).
Some initiatives to oer short training to health
professionals, focusing on reducing their negative attitudes
towards sexual and gender minorities, have been carried out
in the eld of policies and health care in AIDS cases (Poteat
et al., 2017). In addition, international literature provides
a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Development of
Clinical Skills Scale - LGBT-DOCSS (Bidell, 2017), which
evaluates clinical skills, attitudes and basic knowledge
of health professionals in the care of LGBT+ people, and
can guide introductory training sessions. Despite its good
psychometric characteristics, LGBT-DOCSS is not suitable
for TNA of any health professionals, because it is not based
on competencies, but on perceptions and attitudes.
In Brazil, the National Integral Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual,
Transvestite and Transgender Health Policy (Ministry of
Health, 2013) represents an eort to meet the demands
of this vulnerable public, seeking to avoid institutional
discrimination and prejudice in public health services. It serves
as a guide to professional practice and provides guidance on
the needs and specicities of gender, orientation and aective,
and sexual practices of LGBT+ people. However, there is not
yet a national or international competence benchmark that
can contribute to the performance of health professionals, as
well as guide professional training and qualication in the
area of sexual and gender minorities.
The combination of restricted teaching during graduation,
the scarcity of continuous education in daily life, the lack
of regulations or guidelines that prescribe the professional
skills required to attend to the LGBT+ population, end up
Dullius, W. R., & Martins, L. B. (2020). Health Care of LGBT+.
3
contributing to inadequate means of support being provided
to the individual who requires help and health care. Thus,
an instrument capable of advising and better planning
educational actions directed at and pertinent to health
professionals regarding the care of the LGBT+ public, which
can be a useful diagnostic and intervention tool for resolving
inappropriate assistance and solving momentary and long-
term problems in the performance of professionals is needed.
According to the data presented, the existing diculties
arise not only in a specic professional category, but in
several professional categories in the health area. The
methodology of applying a TNA tool is able to identify the
importance of each competence for each professional who
responds, which makes possible the creation of a generic tool
for all professional categories at the same time.
In this sense, the present study aimed at building
and validating, theoretically and statistically, a TNA
instrument for health professionals related to humanized
care for LGBT+ individuals for the Brazilian context. The
instrument makes it possible to identify the decient skills
that need to be trained and analyze those necessary for the
good performance of health professionals’ care routines,
regardless of their area or context of operation, to the
LGBT+ public in their daily work, encompassing questions
about the individual, the professional, work colleagues, the
health unit, and the community.
Method
Participants
In the rst phase of the survey, of a qualitative nature
for mapping the competencies required to assist the LGBT+
public, the sample was composed of 319 health professionals,
among whom 46.4% were psychologists, 21% nurses,
7.2% doctors, 6.9% social workers, and 18.5% other health
professionals. The predominant prole was women (82.8%),
heterosexual (81.8%), with 26 to 35 years of age (35.1%).
In the second phase, which consisted in applying
the validated TNA instrument, in terms of its content
to 449 health professionals: psychologists (41.9%),
nurses (23.8%), nursing technicians (12.2%), doctors (5.3%),
and other professional categories (16.6%); acted as
freelancers (33.2%), in the hospital area (23.2%), in public
health (22.0%), or both (9.8%), in universities (5.6%) and
in the third sector (4.0%). The predominant prole was
women (83.1%), heterosexual (74.2%), aged 26 to 35
years (34.5%), with specialization (43.7%), 10 years or more
of profession (33.9%), and professional performance in the
south (38.5%) and southeast (32.5%) regions of Brazil.
Instrument
The instrument Measuring Training Needs for
Health Care for the LGBT+ Public, produced from the
aforementioned KSAs survey process, underwent theoretical
validation, which took place from semantic validation
and validation by judges described below. The sample
of the semantic validation was composed by seven health
professionals who were attending post-graduation courses
(Master in Psychology), with dierent backgrounds. The
subsequent stage, the validation by judges, was composed of
ve participants (four PhDs and one PhD student), from the
Medicine and Psychology area.
Procedure
Data collection. Divided into two stages: the rst, aimed
at building the actual items of the TNA instrument, and the
second, validating it theoretically and statistically.
The rst stage of the study, for the construction of the
instrument, was carried out entirely via Internet. A Google
Forms link was made available for health professionals
to access, which contained a form with open questions to
map out which skills were required to assist the LGBT+
individual, according to their area of activity and professional
practice. The link was made available along with a brief
invitation explaining the purpose of the research, via e-mail
and social networks for dissemination and sharing by other
health professionals, using the snowball method. Based on
the skills described in the rst stage, it was possible to list 41
skills needed by health professionals in attending the LGBT+
population. This list was submitted to theoretical validation
and then a measurement instrument of 41 items was created.
In the second stage, after the theoretical validation, the
instrument was applied in person to health professionals
from the public and hospital networks of two cities in the
northern region of the state of Rio Grande do Sul; and via
internet, available for open access by health professionals
through a link to the Google Forms form, disclosed again
by email and social networks. In this link there was a form
requesting the socio-demographic and functional data of
the sample of participants, as well as the TNA instrument,
so that the professionals could respond, according to their
daily professional activities, their judgments regarding the
importance and mastery of the skills described.
Data analysis. After the collection, the data were analyzed,
in terms of their contents, through the NVivo Program
version 12.0, for the codication of the KSAs described by
the participants; after the categorization of the data, they
were grouped into 19 pre-categories. After a more in-depth
analysis of the initial categories raised, grouping the items that
resembled in content, a version with 51 items was proposed,
which went through semantic validation (checking whether
items, categories and instructions for lling the instrument are
intelligible to the target audience) and validation by judges
(checking the suitability of the behavioral representation of
the latent attribute(s) by experts in the area of the construction
under analysis) (Pasquali, 2010).
At the end of the second stage of data collection, statistical
analyses of the data were performed in the SPSS (Statistical
Package for the Social Science) version 23.0 program,
according to the guidelines of Field (2009), Hair, Black,
Paidéia, 30, e3034
4
Babin, Anderson and Tatham (2009), Pasquali (2005) and
Tabachnick and Fidell (2013): (a) descriptive (mean, standard
deviation, mode, minimum and maximum, concentration of
responses) and exploratory analyses of the data (data entry,
presence of extreme cases, frequency distribution of variables
and sample size); (b) exploratory factorial analyses - EFA
(principal components and principal axis factoring methods)
and of internal consistency (Cronbach’s Alpha) for the
verication of evidences of validity and reliability of the
constructed measurement instrument (TNA); (c) calculation
of the General Priority Index (GPI = Importance x Inverted
Domain) for each competence listed in the TNA instrument -
the GPI can vary between 1 and 25, being that the values
above 16 indicate training priorities (Borges-Andrade &
Lima, 1983).
Ethical Considerations
Regarding ethical issues, the project was submitted to and
approved by the Research Ethics Committee of the Southern
College - IMED (CAAE No. 69116917.6.0000.5319). The
requirements for conducting research with human beings,
such as the condentiality of both participants and the
information obtained, were met. It was also safeguarded
that the participants, by signing the Free and Informed
Consent Term, could know the purposes of the research and
participate in a voluntary manner.
Results
Theoretical Validation
In the process of semantic validation, the observations
and considerations of health professionals who were
attending graduate school were systematized to allow their
analysis. In the instructions for lling out the instrument, it
was suggested and accepted the exclusion in brackets of the
meaning of the acronym LGBT+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual,
Transvestite, Transgender) and, regarding the items of
the instrument, small grammatical and verbal agreement
adjustments were made in items 8, 12 and 26.
In the validation by judges, the term “client” was changed to
“patient” throughout the instrument, since medical terminology
generally uses the term “patient” to refer to the individual -
although there are dierences in the term “client”/”patient”
in the literature, the term “patient” was chosen, as suggested
by one of the judges; the term LGBT+ was removed in
brackets, since although it tried to cover all the designations, it
ended up excluding some. Therefore, it is understood that the
acronym is already known to the population, which includes
all individuals who do not call themselves heterosexual; other
small grammatical changes have been made in the instructions
of the instrument for its better understanding.
Regarding the changes in the items of the instrument, in
item 1 the word “thematic” was replaced by “theme”; in item
20 the word “action” was changed to “attention”; in item 26
the word “unit” was removed, in order to cover, besides the
health unit, other daily contexts; in item 4 the words “terms”
and “sexual and gender diversity” were added; in item 28
“by health professionals” was included; in item 44 “with
the patient” was added, because according to the judge,
planning is not carried out only with couples, but with all
patients; in items 19, 22, 23, 35 the term “sexual diversity”
was added to maintain the standardization in the instrument
“sexual and gender diversity”; item 5 was rewritten, since it
was considered confusing, having been added examples of
professional councils; in item 6 the action verb of “apply”
was modied to “perform”; items 8,14, 16, 17, 24, 25, 46, 47,
48 and 50 were excluded, since they were already contained
or present great similarity of content with other items of the
instrument, according to the experts’ appreciation.
As for specic terms such as “hebiatry”, “childcare” and
“heteronormative”, among others, it was suggested by some
judges that there should be an explanation for each term in the
sentences; however, it was considered that these terminologies
are taught during graduation to professionals and the item
would be too long; furthermore, as it is a TNA instrument,
the lack of knowledge of the term by the professional would
demonstrate the need for training in this regard.
Statistical Validation
The responses of the 484 participants to the 41 items of
the TNA instrument presented 35 univariate outliers that were
excluded, totaling 449 valid cases. These cases were excluded
because, although EFA is robust to the presence of outliers, they
could interfere in the calculation of the GPI further on. Missing
values were identied between 11 (2.4%) and 23 (5.1%) cases
in the whole instrument, randomly distributed, and it was not
necessary to estimate values to replace them, because the
percentage did not exceed the 5% criterion established.
Anticipating the analysis of principal components, to
perform the analysis of the covariance matrix in terms of
factorability, the size of the correlations and the adequacy
of the sample were analyzed, as well as some desirable
characteristics described by Pasquali (2005): there are
around 11 cases for each item of the instrument; the presence
of linear relations between variables was identied; in more
than 50% of the cases there is signicant correlation between
the items of the instrument and correlation values higher
than 0.30; no pairs of highly correlated items were identied
(r > 0.80), evidencing that there is no multicollinearity. As
for the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) test, a value of 0.95 was
obtained, considered an excellent sample adequacy index
and the Bartlett sphericity test were signicant.
The initial extraction of factors was done through analysis
of the principal components (PC), following the conventional
criteria of analysis of the eigenvalues and their distribution; the
statistical criteria of Horn’s parallel analysis; and the criteria of
importance of the factor. The interpretability and consistency
criteria were made after the rotation of the factors.
The PC, with pairwise treatment for the missing cases,
suggests an empirical structure with six components that
Dullius, W. R., & Martins, L. B. (2020). Health Care of LGBT+.
5
together explain 63.77% of the total variance of the participants’
responses to the questionnaire items. Such analysis followed the
criterion of eigenvalues greater than or equal to one. Regarding
the importance of the factor, Harman’s criterion (Pasquali, 2005)
indicates that each component should explain at least 3% of the
total variance. Thus, six factors at most could be extracted. The
scree plot and Horn’s parallel analysis conrmed the existence
of, at most, four components.
As in the analysis of the eigenvalues and the variance
explained, an indication of the existence of six components
was obtained, against the four indicated by the parallel
analysis and scree plot, solutions were tested with four and six
factors, at rst. However, it was found that the comparison
of the size of the factor 1’s eigenvalues (and its percentage
of variance explained) is much larger than the others, which
indicates that there is a factor that stands out from the others.
Thus, the nal extraction of the factors was performed with
solutions with 1, 4 and 6 factors.
The nal extraction of the factors of the TNA instrument
was performed by means of the principal axis factoring
(PAF), with the oblique rotation method (obimin direct) and
pairwise treatment for omitted cases. Only items with similar
semantic content and factor loads greater than or equal to
0.40 were included in the scale, as they are considered stable
and good representatives of the factor. In PAF with six and
four factors, several items shared variance in more than one
factor; in PAF with only one factor, 40 items had factor load
above 0.40, and only one item had factor load equal to 0.39, a
value slightly below the established criterion. In the solution
with four and six factors, respectively, six and 14 items
presented factor load below this value. Thus, regardless of the
factorial solution chosen, the stability of the items remains
similar. Analyzing the content of the items, it was observed
a better adequacy in the extraction of only one factor, being
that 20 items of shared loads that remain in the rst factor, in
fact, would belong to the other ve factors, if the criterion of
content of the items was considered. Therefore, we opted for
the unifactorial structure (eigenvalue of Factor 1 = 17.06),
which explains 41.61% of the total variance of the responses
to the items of the instrument.
Items 2 “Ask the patient about his or her sexual
orientation” and 8 “Show respect for topics the patient
prefers not to talk about” did not remain in the instrument’s
single-factor empirical structure. It is worth noting that in
solutions with 4 and 6 factors, item 8 never remained in the
structure, and item 2, although it remained, contained the
lowest factor load compared to the others. Therefore, the
nal version of the TNA instrument has 39 items and an
excellent internal consistency index (α = 0.96) - the other
psychometric characteristics can be consulted in Table 1.
Table 1
Empirical structure of the TNA Instrument and descriptive results of the GPI evaluated in the sample of health professionals
Items
Psychometric Characteristics Descriptive Craps Concentration of Answers %*
Factorial
Loads h2X SD 1 to 5 6 to 15 to 25
1.Use the patient’s preferred pronoun. 0.444 0.197 7.98 3.72 48.6 48.9 2.5
2.Ask the patient about his or her sexual
orientation. 0.154 8.08 4.28 41.8 54.6 3.7
3.Use the social name when addressing the
patient. 0.465 0.216 7.56 4.97 56.8 39.7 3.4
4.Approach the topic of sexuality with the
patient. 0.523 0.274 9.09 4.22 33.2 62.1 4.6
5.Addressing the issue of sexually transmitted
infections with the patient. 0.557 0.310 9.18 4.45 34.4 59.3 6.4
6.To adapt the anamnesis to the singularities
of the patient. 0.504 0.254 9.36 4.25 33.9 61 5.1
7.Demonstrate interest in learning with the
patient subjects that I do not master. 0.401 0.161 8.19 3.92 46.5 49.8 3.7
8.Demonstrate respect for topics that the
patient prefers not to talk about. 0.068 7.32 3.10 54.1 44.7 1.1
continues...
Paidéia, 30, e3034
6
Items
Psychometric Characteristics Descriptive Craps Concentration of Answers %*
Factorial
Loads h2X SD 1 to 5 6 to 15 to 25
9.Discuss with the patient the legal regulations
regarding their assistance in the health system. 0.637 0.405 11.77 5.36 18.5 65.4 16
10.Discuss prejudice against sexual and
gender diversity internalized in the patient. 0.650 0.423 9.88 4.87 31.4 59.8 8.7
11.To reinforce the importance of patient
participation in the social context. 0.665 0.442 9.08 4.34 36.7 57.5 5.7
12.Be alert to inuences of religious beliefs
that may interfere with patient care. 0.471 0.222 8.58 3.82 38.8 58.2 3.0
13.Explain the specics of hormone therapy
to the patient. 0.518 0.269 13.96 6.36 14.4 54.7 31.1
14.Encourage the patient to participate
in daily activities of the health unit (e.g.
operating groups, health care task forces,
conversation wheels).
0.639 0.408 9.60 4.75 33 58.4 8.7
15.Guide the transsexual patient in breast
and genital care. 0.633 0.401 12.64 6.21 20.1 56.7 23.2
16.Perform the hebiatry of transsexual
adolescents. 0.437 0.191 14.85 6.58 12.8 49.5 37.7
17.Carry out the child care of transsexual
children. 0.448 0.200 14.98 6.89 15.4 46.6 37.8
18.Carry out family planning with the patient. 0.631 0.398 11.21 6.04 29.4 53.2 17.5
19.Identify the barriers that patients face to
obtain health care. 0.749 0.561 10.53 5.11 29 59.7 11.3
20.Identify the organic specicities within
sexual and gender diversity. 0.719 0.518 12.44 5.76 18.3 60.5 21.2
21.Rewrite clinical protocols of care to meet
the reality of the patient. 0.674 0.455 12.24 5.84 18.8 61 20.2
22.Adapt the terms of the medical record
according to sexual and gender diversity. 0.706 0.499 10.36 5.55 32.8 55.6 11.4
23.Carry out the actions set forth in the
National Policy for LGBT+ Integral Health.
0.751 0.564 13.15 6.00 15.8 60.8 23.4
24.Identify bioethical principles related to
sexual diversity and gender. 0.692 0.478 12.26 5.72 18.4 60.9 20.7
25.Identify psychological specicities within
sexual and gender diversity. 0.702 0.493 11.25 5.48 24.8 60.5 14.7
26.Identify vulnerability to patient illness
due to discrimination in health spaces.
0.772 0.596 10.21 5.08 32 57.9 10.3
27.Execute awareness campaigns about the
rights of LGBT+ people. 0.769 0.591 11.81 5.97 24.9 56.6 18.3
Continuation...
Table 1
Empirical structure of the TNA Instrument and descriptive results of the GPI evaluated in the sample of health professionals
continues...
Dullius, W. R., & Martins, L. B. (2020). Health Care of LGBT+.
7
Items
Psychometric Characteristics Descriptive Craps Concentration of Answers %*
Factorial
Loads h2X SD 1 to 5 6 to 15 to 25
28.Seek help from other professionals if you
have doubts about patient care. 0.607 0.369 8.28 4.27 50.2 45.2 4.7
29.Share with colleagues positive experiences
of LGBT+ public care practices. 0.741 0.549 9.54 5.11 39.5 50.4 10.2
30.Correct discriminatory information about
the patient in the multi-professional team. 0.668 0.447 8.84 4.33 41.3 53.6 5
31.Discuss legal regulations regarding patient
care with other professionals. 0.683 0.467 12.97 5.81 15.5 61.3 23.2
32.Discuss with colleagues about forms of
care with the patient. 0.730 0.533 9.25 4.54 37.6 55.1 7.3
33.Discuss prejudice against sexual and gender
diversity in the multi-professional team. 0.726 0.527 9.42 4.71 38.6 53.6 7.8
34.Be alert to forms of discrimination against
patients practiced by other professionals. 0.638 0.408 8.63 4.15 43.6 51.9 4.4
35.Be alert to the use of heteronormative
patterns by professionals. 0.674 0.454 9.81 4.96 35.5 55.4 9.1
36.Encourage colleagues to participate in
patient care training. 0.648 0.421 9.19 4.41 39.1 55 5.9
37.Provide an inclusive environment for the
patient at the health care facility. 0.665 0.443 9.23 4.65 38.9 54.5 6.5
38.Demand the construction of LGBT+
population health policies from professional
councils (CRP, CRM, Coren, etc.)
0.715 0.512 12.57 5.83 19.5 60.2 20.2
39.Discuss sexual and gender diversity with
the health unit’s wider community. 0.781 0.611 11.64 5.85 25.2 55.4 19.5
40.Listen to the demands from the LGBT+
community. 0.711 0.506 10.21 5.38 35.2 53 11.8
41.Invite members of the LGBT+ community
to discussions with the multidisciplinary team. 0.720 0.519 11.19 5.90 30.5 51.9 17.6
Note. TNA = Training Needs Analysis; GPI = General Priority Index; h2 = item communalities; *1 to 5 = low training priority;
6 to 15 = medium training priority; 16 to 25 = high training priority.
Continuation...
Table 1
Empirical structure of the TNA Instrument and descriptive results of the GPI evaluated in the sample of health professionals
Analysis of General Priority
Regarding the analysis of the General Priority Index
(GPI), it can be seen that the group of health professionals
that participated in the survey presented, in general, an
intermediate training priority (means between 7.32 and
14.85; standard deviation between 3.10 and 6.89), no
item presented high training priority, and only three items
(GPI 3, GPI 8 and GPI 28) presented low training priority
(see the descriptive results of the GPI evaluated by the
ANT instrument in Table 1). These items are related to the
use of the corporate name when serving the individual,
demonstrating respect for the individual and the issues
that the person does not want to report, and about seeking
support from co-workers when they do not have mastery of
the issue addressed during customer service. Another point
to be considered is the greater concentration of missing
answers in the items dealing with the professional jargon
“childcare” and “hebiatry”, which may indicate the lack of
knowledge of these professionals about the terms and their
Paidéia, 30, e3034
8
actions in assisting individuals of these age groups, that is,
children and adolescents.
Discussion
The results revealed a unifatorial empirical structure for
the TNA instrument, with theoretical and statistical meaning,
according to the careful validations performed. The values
of the internal consistency index (Cronbach’s Alpha) and the
factor loads show that the instrument presents reliability and
evidence of validity. Therefore, the proposed instrument is
congured as a diagnostic tool for health professionals and
health system managers, such as hospitals and other care
contexts, by providing a survey of the gaps in the skills of
professionals in attending the LGBT+ public. The training
needs assessment would subsidize the interventions according
to the results obtained, proposing educational actions
according to the identied training priority levels and with
the participation of those professionals who should eectively
develop or consolidate a set of skills not mastered, but
important for the performance of their functions.
As the TNA instrument has many items in a single
factor solution, one should consider increasing the value of
α, known to be inated by the number of items. However,
no redundancy or pairs of highly correlated items were
identied, according to the multicollinearity analysis, which
corroborates the structure found and the maintenance of the
39 items in the solution.
After the theoretical validation period, some health
professionals sent complementary suggestions, such as:
not using the term “patient”, but “user or person”; instead
of using the term “transsexual”, replace it with “transsexual
person”; regarding “family planning” it was suggested to
modify it to “reproductive planning”; and, some physical
education professionals claimed their participation as
members of the multidisciplinary primary care health team.
These suggestions should be taken into consideration in
future applications of the instrument.
The health professionals who composed the sample
designated, in general, a high importance for the items
presented, as well as considered mastering the skills described.
When checking the GPI, the concentrations of responses
are located in the midpoints (at the limit for high training
priority), which indicate medium training priority for this
sample of professionals, and there are no gaps that should be
immediately addressed through educational actions, but there
are indications that there are skills that would merit attention,
such as, for example, those that include addressing the issue
of sexuality with the user; discussing with the user the legal
regulations on health system assistance; rewriting protocols
for LGBT+ users, with the inclusion of the National Integral
LGBT+ Health Policy, in addition to involving class councils
in aiding humanized assistance.
However, the items obtained high standard deviation
values (ranging from 3.10 to 6.89), which means that there
is disagreement among the participants’ responses regarding
the analysis of importance or mastery of the skills evaluated,
possibly due to the heterogeneity of the professional categories
that composed the sample. There are competencies that t
more directly in the performance of certain professional
categories and less in others, which may have led respondents
to say that they are important, but do not dominate them -
although the instructions for completion clarify that each
competence should be analyzed with focus on the function
performed and not on its importance as a whole for health
care. It would be interesting, for a next application of the
measure, to obtain a sample uniformly distributed among
the various professional categories, making it possible, by
means of statistical analyses of comparison between groups,
to verify if there are signicant dierences in the means
obtained according to the perception of the gaps between the
dierent health professionals. In this study, it was not possible
to identify if there is a certain professional category that would
need training, making it impossible to nd results that would
dierentiate the professional categories from one another.
The items of the TNA instrument encompass
competences in the cognitive, aective and psychomotor
domains, with a predominance of those of a cognitive
nature, at the initial levels of knowledge and understanding;
in the aective area, the level of receptivity and in the
psychomotor, the perception are more frequently present.
The calculation of the GPI shows that among the average
training priorities found, the items that include cognitive
skills have a higher percentage, followed, respectively, by
aective skills and psychomotor skills. This analysis of the
domains and learning outcomes would subsidize the planning
of an educational action adequate to the dened instructional
objectives, i.e., the very competencies described in the
instrument, indicating that training with a focus on cognitive
skills, or on knowledge primarily technical, would be the
most adequate. In this training model, there is the gure of an
instructor who transmits information, concepts, methods and
technical procedure, so that the student gets the theoretical-
practical content to be trained and performs activities such as
simulations and eld work (Meneses et al., 2010).
On the other hand, an aective training, seeking to
develop behavioral skills and related to the posture of the
professional in the performance with the patient, would attend
and benet other competencies that are intrinsically linked to
the emotional and aective area, including in this spectrum
values, attitudes, appreciations, interests, dispositions and
emotional tendencies of the participants of the educational
action. In this sense, with the relevant instructional procedures
(e.g., simulations, group dynamics, debates, behavioral
modeling), dierent from those eminently cognitive and
traditionally applied, skills would be developed that confront
those related to customs and postures shaped by ideologies
and socio-cultural context during the entire previous process
of personal and professional development of the individual -
for example, receptivity and respect in welcoming the
individual in the assistance, showing tolerance to dierences
encountered in the work environment, paying attention to
Dullius, W. R., & Martins, L. B. (2020). Health Care of LGBT+.
9
the individual’s speech during the welcome, considering and
respecting the person’s placements.
This study aimed at building and validating, theoretically
and statistically, a TNA instrument for health professionals
related to humanized care for LGBT+ individuals in the
Brazilian context. It can be armed that such purpose was
achieved, having been obtained an instrument with evidence
of validity and reliability.
The instrument can be used as a tool to measure training
needs and identify competence gaps in LGBT+ user care
for health professionals. Since the national literature
does not make available any instrument of this type, this
unprecedented measure makes possible the proposal of
educational actions compatible with the priority indices
raised in the diagnosis. Based on this, managers in
health contexts will be able to use the tool to apply it to
their team’s professionals to verify training needs and,
depending on the results obtained, direct the training
to professionals with competence gaps, in addition to
opting for adequate training according to the nature of the
required skills, producing positive and eective reexes
in the assistance to the health system user. Besides being
used to evaluate the importance and mastery of each KSA
in self-evaluation (health professionals, as in the case of
this study), it can also be applied in hetero-evaluation
(management and patients), in order to complement the
self-reported information about the competence gaps of
health professionals, which can be conrmed (or not) by
superiors and users of services.
To ll the gaps identied, relevant interventions should
be programmed according to the nature of the competencies
to be developed, aiming at obtaining eective results
in the application and transfer of skills to the work. It is
important to emphasize the need to develop complex
skills, such as interpersonal, in the health area, and the
use of more than one sense in educational instructions or
actions, not only cognition, but also aection and emotion.
Therefore, training for health professionals should consider
externalities, which include macro intervening variables
such as culture, beliefs and values of individuals. Therefore,
such interventions (trainings) should be performed in the
long term, since changes in health professionals’ skills and
attitudes in attending LGBT+ individuals involve other
variables (much more complex than those of the knowledge
level), not only of the cognitive level, for the transference
to occur in practice.
For this reason, rst of all, the necessary competencies
to attend this public and the gaps should be raised by
dening training priorities (GPI calculation), and then
analyzing other inuential variables that may interfere with
the success of the educational actions implemented and also
in the work context, such as prejudice. The change in the
training of these professionals will occur in the long term, as
it depends on changes in society in general. Undergraduate
curricula and other training will need to consider the
training of eminently cognitive content, coupled with
social skills training (intra and interpersonal) and aective
content for successful performance in the labor market.
Permanent health education depends on interventions, in
educational terms, diversied in type and nature, to achieve
the development of cognitive and technical skills, but also
those of the aective domain, such as those of attitudinal
and behavioral nature present in the instrument.
Despite the contributions of the study, a limitation refers
to certain homogeneity of the sample in terms of professional
categories, the area of psychology being the most frequent.
It is suggested that the instrument be applied to a more
heterogeneous sample of health professionals, to conrm
or rectify the results found. Another limitation is related to
the fact that the instrument prioritizes the cognitive domain
over the aective one. This is at the basis of the prejudice
of professionals towards the LGBT+ public, inducing them
to practice discriminatory behaviors in health contexts. An
alternative would be, concomitantly to the application of the
TNA measure, to directly assess the levels of prejudice of
professionals, complementing the information for the training
proposal. Another point to be considered is the greater
participation in the validation process of health professionals
who have declared themselves as heterosexual. In this sense,
it is recommended that the instrument be reviewed by health
professionals and also by health system users who do not
identify themselves as heterosexual, providing a holistic
and more appropriate look at the needs of the target public,
as to how to provide and receive assistance from health
professionals, according to the viewpoint of the users of the
services themselves.
As for the sample of professionals who made up the
face-to-face data collection, the restriction on the number of
health professionals participating points to the diculty in
talking about the issue of diversity or exposing its gaps in the
performance directed at the LGBT+ public, since several of
them refused to respond to the survey when they had clarity
of their objectives. By identifying the discomfort of some
professionals in collaborating due to the LGBT+ issue, the
title of the survey was changed to “health professionals’
assistance to sexual minorities”, a fact that seems to have
provided greater acceptance by professionals in participating
in the survey.
As a research agenda, it is proposed that the tool
be applied in various samples and contexts to carry out
diagnoses on the skills gaps in health care for the LGBT+
public, as well as that, interventions in terms of education
may be proposed from the TNA.
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Willian Roger Dullius holds a Master’s Degree in Psychology
from IMED, Passo Fundo-RS, Brazil.
Lara Barros Martins is a Professor of the Health School at
IMED, Passo Fundo-RS, Brazil.
Authors’ Contribution:
All authors made substantial contributions to the conception
and design of this study, to data analysis and interpretation,
and to the manuscript revision and approval of the nal
version. All the authors assume public responsibility for
content of the manuscript.
Received: Jun. 10, 2019
1st Revision: Sep. 17, 2019
2nd Revision: Nov. 15, 2019
Approved: Dec. 04, 2019
How to cite this article:
Dullius, W. R., & Martins, L. B. (2020). Training needs measure
for health care of the LGBT+ public. Paidéia (Ribeirão Preto),
30, e3034.doi:https://doi.org/10.1590/1982-4327e3034
