Journal of general internal medicine
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Lack of Informed and Affirming Healthcare for Sexual Minority Men: A Call for Patient-Centered Care.
Sexual minority men (SMM) face severe health inequities alongside negative experiences that drive avoidance of medical care. Understanding how SMM experience healthcare is paramount to improving this population's health. Patient-centered care, which emphasizes mutual respect and collaboration between patients and providers, may alleviate the disparaging effects of the homophobia that SMM face in healthcare settings. ⋯ SMM expressed a clear and strong desire for patient-centered approaches to care, often informed by experiences with healthcare providers who were unable to adequately meet their needs. However, widespread adoption of patient-centered care will require improving education and training for clinicians, with a focus on LGBTQ-specific clinical care and cultural humility. Through centering patients' preferences and experiences in the construction of care, patient-centered care can reduce health inequities among SMM and empower healthcare utilization in a population burdened by historic and ongoing stigmatization.
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Little is known about how to best evaluate, diagnose, and treat long COVID, which presents challenges for patients as they seek care. ⋯ Our findings shed light on challenges faced by patients with long COVID as they seek care. Healthcare systems and providers should consider these challenges when developing strategies to improve care coordination for patients with long COVID.
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COVID-19 presented numerous challenges to primary care, but little formal research has explored the experience of practice leaders and their strategies for managing teams as the crisis unfolded. ⋯ As the burnout and workforce crises have accelerated, the identified strategies can be useful to leaders to support teams and build organizational resilience in primary care moving forward.