Blog offers guidance on providing gender-affirming care

Sharing one’s own pronouns with every introduction is one way of providing gender-affirming care, according to Miles Harris. A nonbinary-identified family nurse practitioner, an assistant clinical professor at the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing at UC Davis and director for Gender-Affirming Care at UC Davis Health, Harris urges health leaders to add pronouns to everyone’s identification badge or make sure they are a routine part of meeting introductions. In addition, nurses in clinical and research roles can collect sexual orientation and gender identity data. Clinicians should ask about gender identity and sex assigned at birth as two separate questions. Harris also encourages nurses to engage their workplaces, state associations, unions and other professional organizations to make statements against discriminatory legislation and partner with trans-led advocacy organizations. (Campaign for Action blog, 12/8/22)