The wait time for 2SLGBTQIA+ patients has gone from nine to three months.
When the Halifax Sexual Health Centre’s wait time for patients seeking gender-affirming hormones had grown to nine months, Abbey Ferguson started to worry.
It was the beginning of 2020, and 2SLGBTQIA+ patients were being sent to the centre by doctors who did not have the confidence or knowledge to prescribe, said Ferguson, a health promoter at the centre.
“The situation was quite dire,” she said in an interview Thursday. “The demand on HSHC was beyond anything we had experienced before.”
To shorten the waiting time, Kirk Furlotte, the Atlantic regional manager of the Community-Based Research Centre partnered with Nova Scotia Health’s prideHealth to plan an in-person training day for health-care providers. The idea was to teach doctors and nurse practitioners how to confidently prescribe gender-affirming hormones and pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP).
Kirk Furlotte, Atlantic Regional Manager of CBRC
This article was written by Nicola Seguin and originally posted on The Signal. Please click HERE to read the full article.
