GPs 'too busy' for gay counselling

Doctors are unlikely to attend workshops to stamp out anti-gay attitudes because they are too busy, the Medical Association says.

Homophobic doctors and teachers are the targets of a $50,000 Aids Foundation campaign which starts in the next month, with workshops running at schools, hospitals and doctors' rooms around the country.

Research by the foundation over the past five months has highlighted instances of homophobia among health professionals and teachers, including:

A suspected gay pupil being called a faggot, having his head shoved down a toilet and faeces put in his bed at a boys' boarding school.

A doctor offering to pray for his patient so he would be cured of homosexuality. He advised his patient to leave home in case he gave his parents Aids. The man was not HIV positive.

An Oamaru teenager who hitchhiked to Christchurch for medical advice about a sexually transmitted infection because he believed the local doctor would tell his parents he was gay.

A gay schoolboy, being bullied, whose parents were told they should find a school "better suited to [his] chosen lifestyle" than the one he was attending.

A doctor who told a boy's father that his son was gay and he could not treat him any more.

Foundation executive director Kevin Hague said some people did not like discussing health problems, especially sexual problems, if they perceived health professionals to be homophobic.

Men with low self-esteem were more likely to get HIV-Aids because they did not have the confidence to be sexually safe and discuss such issues with a doctor.

Mr Hague said he did not expect medical professionals and teachers at the extreme end of the discrimination scale to attend the workshops. He hoped such people would become more tolerant.

Medical Association chairwoman Pippa MacKay said doctors were not consulted about the workshops and she doubted whether many would attend because of heavy workloads.

Dr MacKay said the association encouraged its members to treat patients sensitively and took a dim view of doctors being offensive.

"I don't think there's a lot of evidence that doctors do exhibit homophobia," she said.

Post Primary Teachers' Association spokeswoman Sue Shone said the union welcomed the workshops. A union survey last year had revealed high levels of homophobia in schools.

- NZPA