Group project: Research

Individual blog of group project for Ideation & prototyping class

Reflection on last week’s class

I want to talk about last week’s class first, when we first got our group project topic from NYU Langone Health. I felt scared instead of excited when I was first told that we would be working in groups on how to improve patient experience for people who are transgender, nonbinary and genderqueer. The reason for this feeling was that I was really unfamiliar with this topic and I had no confident of doing it well as I had no clues at all for this field. But on the other hand, I knew this situation would be normal in the future workplace and I needed this skills of fast learning and empathy for minor population. Therefore, this is a perfect chance for me to learn.

In addition, I was so touched in the workshop with our guest speaker — Max(They/Them). Max taught me what is empathy in mind and empathy in heart. In the workshop, We went through a story of Julie, a transgender black woman, who went to see a doctor but came across a lot of naming and pronouns issues. When our group was discussing the question of what actions hospitals could take to prevent the situation, we wrote down a method of letting patients to put their prefer name in the profile to fix the problem that patients’ names are different from their birth names. We didn't think much about this and thought this was an easy and accessible solution.

However, later on, Max told us that they don’t prefer a prefer name, because their names are just their only names and thus they don’t have prefer names. Max’s words blew my mind off. I started to put myself in their shoes and imagined a situation that people kept telling my name wrongly like Ava instead of Eva. I would be so annoyed and felt disrespectful. It was that moment that I started to emphasize them truly in my heart, not in my head.

I also found out how I lack knowledge and actions for respecting every individuals. This workshop reminded of my first class in New York university two month ago. It was on Creative Coding class. Our professor asked us to introduce ourselves including the message of your name, prefer name, pronounce and background. Everyone spoke one by one. I felt so unnecessary to speak of pronounce at that time because I thought the professor could just tell by our outer look. However, last week, I understood why we need to ask the pronounce first and why it is a symbol of respect because we call others the way they want to be called and tell them that we see you of who you are.

From my previous education, I never heard of this topic rising in Taiwan or mainland of China. People never talk about pronounce. I ask myself, is it because it’s the same Mandarin pronunciation in he and she so people don’t have to clarify it? But I conclude that people just didn’t notice and don’t care about this issue because they neither ask whether people want to call themselves they(which is a different pronunciation with he/she). Thanks Max for teaching me another lesson in this topic.

This Week’s Plan

1. Everyone do the research on LGBTQ health and wellness
2. Meet the team on Nov.15 to discuss the research and draft the survey

Research

I read articles and dissertation online to know more about LGBTQ group.

1. Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Health
2. Barriers to Health Care for Transgender Individuals
3. Affirmative Care for Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming People: Best Practices for Front-line Health Care Staff
4. Global Health Burden and Needs of Transgender Populations: A Review

After reading, I think that life is so hard for them because it needs so much courage, energy and money to become who they are. They suffer from different health issues in like mental health, sexual and reproductive health, substance use, violence/victimization, stigma/discriminations and other. Unfortunately, the care for them is not sufficient or respectful. Some may also have financial barriers to get the service because of the insurance coverage. Every part in the process of receiving service needs more research.

Meeting

Our team met on Nov 15 to talk about what we did for research. We shared questions on how to narrow down the topic and we decided to first hand out the survey and then narrow the topic based on the results collected. Therefore, we made a draft of survey including questions in the basic information, insurance and clinic experience. We will reach out to different organizations and friends to hand out the survey later this week.

Thoughts

The more research we do, the more information we can know and gradually emphasize with people. I learned to embrace the difference and respect every individual as who they are. I also learned to embrace the ambiguity in design and figure out the direction based on every steps’ observation. What’s more, I like group projects, because we can learn from each other and listen to other’s perspectives when communicating.