A review by kant_stop_reading
The Remedy: Queer and Trans Voices on Health and Health Care by Zena Sharman, Cooper Lee Bombardier, Sinclair Sexsmith

3.0

This book certainly covers an important topic of which I am mainly ignorant. It provides a variety of view points from this community. I found it a useful reminder for people in health care to be conscious of how they interact with ALL patients. There is a chapter about a patient receiving cancer treatment that I could personally relate to and it wasn't a perception limited to only a trans-gendered person's perspective but could easily have been any type of person undergoing the humiliating process of fighting cancer. The middle chapters lacked the depth of story I needed to be drawn in to understand how the struggles of this community are different from the struggles of any other. Further, I found one chapter in particular confusing because up until this point the pretext was that there should be seamless inclusion of all people, yet when asked how they would benefit from a large donation to the Trans Buddy Program in TN, the response was to basically create a facility that employed only trans-sexual employees. To me this line of thinking is why SJW has a negative connotation; if you want to build a community of only one type of person to the exclusion and discomfort of others, then why are you complaining if that is what the (majority of) people around you have done? The later portion of the book improved by raising more specific examples that health care providers could benefit from exploring. I guess the title of the book raised my expectations of what I could glean from the text. This population is increasingly visible in my own practice and I was hoping to get better suggestions on how to offer appropriate communication and compassionate care, but I was left wanting. It will make me look for another reference or two. Overall I felt that this was a brief, easy read that gave a very shallow view of an area worth broader examination.