Nursing's silence on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender issues: the need for emancipatory efforts.
The purpose of this study was to selectively review the nursing literature for publications related to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender health, using (1) a key word search of CINAHL, the database of nursing and allied health publications; (2) from the top-10 nursing journals by 5-year impact factor from 2005 to 2009, counting articles about lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender issues; and (3) content analysis of the articles found in those journals. Only 0.16% of articles focused on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender health (8 of nearly 5000 articles) and were biased toward authors outside of the United States. We discuss the impact of this silence.
Department of Health Education, San Francisco State University San Francisco, CA, USA. meliason@sfsu.edu
Michele J
MJ
Eliason
Suzanne
S
Dibble
Jeanne
J
Dejoseph
D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D001727:Bisexuality / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D005260:Female; D006716:Homosexuality / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D018452:Homosexuality, Female / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D018451:Homosexuality, Male / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009723:Nurse-Patient Relations; D009726:Nurses / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D015404:Nursing Methodology Research; D010506:Periodicals as Topic / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D017594:Publication Bias; D012938:Social Perception; D014481:United States