As questões LGBT no ensino da odontologia

Abstract

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transvestite and transgender (LGBT) people have unique sexual identities and orientations; this must be addressed and incorporated into the health care provided. International studies show that dentistry students have a considerable lack of knowledge or recognition of LGBT people resulting from the little interest of directors of educational institutions in including the contents in their curricula and the smaller amounts of curricular and extracurricular hours in LGBT education, with approaches null or insignificant of these contents compared to students from other courses in the health area. The National Curriculum Guidelines for Dentistry courses in Brazil, published in 2021, brought positive changes related to the theme, guiding the inclusion of theoretical and practical content with reference to gender equity and sexual orientation. Research in dental education aimed at the LGBT population has been rare until now. Thus, this work sought to analyze how students and professors of the Dentistry course at a Higher Education Institution understand the approach to LGBT issues during the course. This dissertation is composed of two chapters. The first describes the construction process of the research, the contextualization of the literature, the objectives, and the qualitative methodologies used. The second chapter presents the results of the empirical study, and the thematic categories produced by the content analysis carried out. The study revealed that the LGBT theme is not effectively included in the curriculum of the Dentistry course, occurring only occasionally. Participants considered it important to encourage this insertion and made suggestions to improve and qualify the training of future dentistry professionals.