Queering baccalaureate nursing education in Canada: a survey and qualitative content analysis of curriculum and policy documents

Shortall, Chris (2017) Queering baccalaureate nursing education in Canada: a survey and qualitative content analysis of curriculum and policy documents. Masters thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

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Abstract

Lesbian Bisexual Gay Transgender Intersex and Queer (LBGTIQ, See: Appendix A) health and wellness data is largely ignored in policy domains. One way to redress the deleterious health effects of institutionalized cisgenderism and heterosexism is to train health professionals to be sensitive and knowledgeable about health and wellness issues that are known to greatly affect sexually and gender diverse people (aka: LBGTIQ). Studies have found that there is no standardization of sex and sexuality content in health professional education in North American universities. The present research focuses on the relative inclusion of sexuality and gender diversity health and wellness information in Canadian English language baccalaureate nursing curriculum and curricular policy. This research, informed by documented health and wellness experiences of LBGTIQ people, situated in the academic discipline of Applied Health Services Research, is a unique critical queer theoretical analysis of survey data and policy texts. The data for this research was collected from a nationwide survey of nursing school administrators in 2013, is scaffolded against LBGTIQ health and wellness literature, as well as nursing education policy. Surveys were returned from 17/76 institutions in Canada and the results show that LBGTIQ content in baccalaureate nursing curriculum in Canada is nominal, imperfect, and unregulated at best. Faculty were concerned about their own personal and professional ability to teach in the area of sexuality and gender diversity and less concerned with curricular policy advocacy in the area. After qualitative content analysis was performed on 52 educational policy documents in nursing, there revealed a need for inclusive policy development in the area of LBGTIQ subjectivities. The research found that while Canadian English language baccalaureate nursing curricular policy allows for an expanded notion of gender diversity that may give space to transgender people, queer, intersex, and other nonheteronormative notions of gender identity, it lacks clear position statements in the area of sexuality and gender diversity to be able to achieve inclusion in curriculum. The result is invisibility; haphazard inclusion; ill-defined policy with no directive from the national, provincial/territorial professional organizations. It was noted that the change in licensing exam might have affected the situation during the course of this research. Several recommendations are lobbied towards structuring LBGTIQ health and wellness curricular inclusion at the various levels of policy and pedagogy in baccalaureate nursing curriculum in Canada and a call for the nursing profession to pay attention to the political nature of policy.

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