This wonderful country, the United States of America is a unique and magnificent blend of so many diverse types of people. From religion, culture, and gender to age and language; these differences can affect proper and effective customer service and communication. In healthcare being able to overcome and respect these many variations can be the difference between a wonderful experience and a horrible one. Out of these diverse groups of people, one of the more difficult would be gender, specifically transgender individuals. With so many people who identify as certain genders or a blend of them, knowing how to handle these types of communication barriers is extremely important. When addressing someone knowing how they identify in terms of gender …show more content…
The transgender population makes up around 1.4 million individuals in the United States (Flores, A. et al., 2016) this makes for a large chunk of people who can be misidentified causing issues with communication.
The biggest communication issue with the transgender population is using the proper pronouns when addressing the individuals. Using ‘he, him, or sir’ on someone who identifies as
COMMUNICATION BARRIERS
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female can hinder communication because that person sees this as an offence. Calling a transgender person an ‘it’ is also very offensive and just plain disrespectful. It can often times be difficult to determine gender just by looking at someone and assumptions should never be made.
No knowing how to address someone who is transgender can be not only offensive to them but can also be quite embarrassing for all involved. According to Adams, M.A., and the other authors of ‘Transgender Communication Studies: Histories, Trends, and Trajectories’, there is not much literature about communication issues with transgender individuals especially in the medical field. However they do comment that many transgender people avoid medical help because of the discrimination they endure