Grand Round on improving transgender patient care
Final-year student doctor Antony Lavercombe was invited to present his patient experience improvement ideas at a Grand Round at Blackpool Victoria Hospital after picking up the Gus Tang Bursary to support his Elective placement at the trust.
The bursary was created in memory of the late Mr Gus Tang, Consultant Cardiac Surgeon and awarded to Antony to support his Elective at Blackpool this summer.
“As part of the bursary I was tasked with presenting at a Grand Round on something I had worked on during my four-week Elective.
On day one of the placement I was shadowing in colposcopy clinic when we, as a clinical team, encountered our first transgender man within the colposcopy clinic.
After spending time with this patient, I was inspired to see if I could come up with some ideas that may improve transgender care within the colposcopy clinic for future patients.
I went about researching and found that the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) are currently developing guidelines around this. I was able to work with the draft copy of guidelines, combined with my experience within colposcopy, to suggest ways in which this clinic and the wider hospital come improve experience for gender diverse patients in the future.
Overall, my presentation at the Grand Round got a very good reception from the doctors, and I was faced with some complex and challenging questions after.
This was my first experience at trying to improve patient experience and it is something I am particularly passionate about. I enjoyed the research and trying to figure out how, in the future, we can improve patients’ experience and positive outcomes for this clinic.”
Discover more
- See Antony’s presentation in full (PDF).
- Learn more about the RCOG’s draft guidelines on the 'Care of Trans and Gender Diverse People within Obstetrics and Gynaecology' (link).
- Electives are a four-week placement at the end of Year 4 in which students can broaden their undergraduate education, explore new disciplines, or old disciplines in greater depth. Liverpool Student Doctors can find out more about Electives on the Electives section of the student intranet (link).