Mount Sinai To Train Docs On Gender-Affirmation Surgery - Caroline Lewis

Mount Sinai Health System is planning a three-day event in April that will use live gender-affirmation surgeries to train health care professionals treating transgender patients. The procedures that clinicians will observe include vaginoplasty, breast augmentation, facial feminization, metoidioplasty (female-to-male surgery) and top surgery. The surgeries will be performed in operating rooms within the hospital and then broadcast into the Stern auditorium. "There's a much greater demand now for these kinds of procedures than there is a supply of quality personnel to provide them," said Barbara Warren, director of LGBT programs and policies at Mount Sinai's Office of Diversity and Inclusion. Gender-affirmation surgeries require trained professionals throughout the continuum of care, including mental health professionals, social workers, primary care doctors, clerical staff and nurses, said Warren. In New York, demand for gender-affirmation surgery has risen since Medicaid agreed to cover it in 2015. Mount Sinai has 500 patients queued up for a gender-affirmation procedure of some kind. Mount Sinai will charge for the training sessions, for which participants can get continuing-medical-education credits. It also received funding from the state Health Department, which views gender-affirmation surgery as part of its HIV-prevention agenda. "The more people get to fully be themselves and get the medical care they need, the more incentive they have to take care of themselves and avoid issues like HIV infection," Warren said.

• Barbara Warren, PsyD, Director, LGBT Programs and Policies, Mount Sinai’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion
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