The Height General Practice in Salford has achieved the bronze Pride in Practice Award, recognising the high standard of healthcare it’s providing for the LGBTQ community.
Pride in Practice is a support service offered by the LGBT Foundation, aiming to strengthen and develop healthcare services for LGBT patients.
The award aims to recognise GP’s commitment to providing inclusive healthcare and is achieved through a self-assessment process highlighting the strengths of the service as well as areas where the LGBT Foundation can offer support.
The Height Practice began working towards the award after a patient approached the LGBT team to say how welcoming the surgery was and how they “didn’t feel judged” when they came into them, prompting the surgery to want to get more involved with the LGBTQ community and to further improve the services they offer.
Holly Walsh, assistant manager at The Height General Practice said: “We got in touch with somebody at the LGBT team and that’s when we started working towards out Pride in Practice awards.”
The practice started by changing their registration forms to make sure they were including non-binary and trans women and men as options on the form.
“We actually do have quite a big transgender population in our practice. We got CQC [Care Quality Commission] outstanding as well so taking into account that we always make sure on our website we are promoting that we are working towards Pride in Practice, we’re all wearing our rainbows and our colours and things like that.
“Getting that out there has definitely seen more uptake from the LGBT community.”
“You just wouldn’t want anyone feeling like they’re being judged, especially in this day and age as well when there’s such a massive thing with regards to mental health. I just think it’s 2018 and people will be who they want to be and nobody should be judged for who they are.”
Research found that 65 percent of young people say there were not able to fill out trans questions honestly, while 45 percent say they were unable to answer questions on sexuality honestly.
By working towards the Pride in Practice award, GP’s across Salford are hoping to become more inclusive.
Now, all staff at The Height Practice wear rainbow lanyards and in the waiting room of the practice, patients can find a notice board full of information for the LGBTQ community.
Take a look at which GP’s in Salford have the Pride in Practice award below:
Having gained the bronze award, the surgery now has its eyes on gold.
“As far as I know, every practice in Salford is working towards the pride in practice and most practice have already got that gold award.
“Ours is booked for January so fingers crossed we’re going for gold in January.”
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