NYMC Hosts Regional LGBTQIA+ Emergency Medicine Conference

“At Metropolitan Hospital, we have a large LGBTQIA+ patient population and those patients, in general, tend to receive poor health care,” said Frosso Adamakos, M.D., vice chair of education and medical education fellowship director at Metropolitan, and clinical assistant professor of emergency medicine, who organized the conference. “One of our main goals was to educate physicians, nurses and even patients, who can then advocate for themselves, on important health care topics—so that ultimately we can decrease the health care gap for this population of patients and LGBTQIA+, trans and non-binary patients receive better health care services.”

The keynote address on sex-positive psychology was delivered by Ronnie Rivera, M.D., associate director of the Emergency Medicine Clerkship at the University of California-Irvine. Conference attendees also heard from several other clinicians and faculty educators on a range of topics, including lesbian, gay and bisexual patients’ health and health care disparities, transgender health and pediatric and adolescent health, during the half-day conference.   

“I'm hopeful that the health care professionals who attended the conference learned things that will allow them to take better care of not just LGBTQIA+, trans and non-binary patients, but patients in general, such as to have fewer biases and to be more open-minded and compassionate to patients,” said Dr. Adamakos. “One thing I learned myself, having listened to lectures like this before, is how to get better at walking into the room and asking who is this person in the room with you? I strongly believe that there was a lot learned in how we can take overall better care of our patients.”

“During the week of the conference, Metropolitan opened a Pride Center, which offers a separate area with specifically trained clinicians to care for LGBTQIA+ patient care needs. It's really exciting that we are carving out this niche at Metropolitan,” said Dr. Adamakos, who plans to continue to build on the success of the conference and make it an annual event held during Pride Month. “Hosting a conference like this can be controversial, so we feel very lucky to be in the supportive environment of NYMC and NYC Health + Hospitals.”