I have been a hospice social worker for 15 years now so I was excited to see this book when it came across my Netgalley feed. While this is not an especially long book, there is a lot of information in it.

The author talks about the history of this population and the difficulties accessing health care (which is still a major problem in many places in the US) which I think helps the health care provider be more sensitive to multiple issues. The book provides good information on how to discuss gender, assigned gender at birth, pronouns, sexuality and more. It gives the caregiver a good foundation on these topics and helps prepare them to do appropriate assessments while being respectful.

The book also discusses practical applications such as setting goals, ethical and legal issues, pain management, disease progression etc. The layout is very hands on and easy to read. I found it really well done and I would love to see this book added to the required reading lists of MSW's and med students.

**ARC provided through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review**

I hope to see this become essential reading for many people, not just professionals who work in palliative care. I was especially impressed with the activities suggested at the beginning to prompt readers to examine their own potential biases and to gain empathy. It's one thing to say that heterosexuality is viewed as 'neutral'; it is another thing to ask someone to keep track of how often they allude to their heterosexuality or ask them to pretend for a week that they cannot divulge who their partner is or show affection towards them except in private. The latter exercises may really have the potential to change viewpoints.

This book is full of clinical advice that nurses can use while providing holistic, culturally competent, diverse and ethical patient care.

I feel like this is a good book to bring attention to things healthcare professionals might not be aware of and guarantee that LGBTQ+ people get the best possible care at the end of their lives. The healthcare field often doesn't have resources like this, so it's great to see them popping up!

The book is pleasant to read, informative without being condescending and a good start for healthcare workers who are looking to inform themselves on lgbtq+ care. A+, would recommend to anyone!

This review is based on an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This amazingly-named author is a tenured associate professor at the George Washington University School of Nursing, and evidently knows her stuff. I'm not a health-care professional, but I have worked closely with nurses in two different hospital environments, so I was familiar with the kinds of things she discusses here, and the importance of getting them right. She's also a doctor - of the PhD variety (in Human Sexuality Education) rather than the MD variety - and has a master's in Social Work and a BA in sociology (all from UPenn). She's also been a Fulbright scholar, so clearly she's on top of her game when it comes to the material she goes into here, and she pretty much covers the gamut of required learning when it comes to the treatment (in the broadest sense) of people from the LGBTQIA community.

The chapters cover these topics:
Self-Awareness and Communication
Sex, Gender, Sexual Orientation, Behavior, and Health
Understanding Attitudes and Access to Care
The History and Physical Examination
Shared Decision Making and Family Dynamics
Care Planning and Coordination
Ethical and Legal issues
Patient and Family Education and Advocacy
Psychosocial and Spiritual issues
Ensuring Institutional Inclusiveness
But what was really impressive was how often the author steps outside the box to point out areas you might never even have considered might be relevant or important. She's definitely given this topic some considerable thought, and I doubt there are many questions you could come up with which aren't at least touched on here.

The book is written for academics, but it's very accessible and straight-forward throughout. It contains a glossary, references, and an index. Overall I recommend it. If I had a reservation about any of this, it was that, as usual, this type of book seems to have been written solely with a print version in mind, and the e-version coming in a poor second, so while I am sure the presentation and formatting of the print version is excellent, the e-version which I got left a lot to be desired! I am hoping, as I write this, that the advance review copy I had was a quick and dirty conversion for reviewers, and that if there is to be a ebook, it will be a lot better than this, because frankly the e-version was awful!

The errors and poor formatting of the e-version made for a really irritating read. You may call me a prima donna if you wish, since I don't care what you think of me, but my expectations are low when it comes to the quality of e-versions of ARCs. Even so, there really is no excuse for a sloppy review copy like this. Reviewers aside, it's an insult to the LGBTQIA community, and any reviewer would be perfectly justified in failing a book in this condition. I know Amazon offers a truly crappy Kindle app, but even it can do better than this would lead you to believe!

I'm not a professional reviewer despite the shields with which Net Galley has honored me, and I realize that we amateurs can't expect to be treated like professional reviewers and get a pristine copy, much less a print copy, but we do deserve a certain minimum level of respect, especially if we're expected to enjoy a book and be persuaded to feel inclined to review it favorably! personally, I ditched Smashwords as a publishing platform because they're insanely anal and too-often inconsistent for my taste, but I have to agree in principle with their approach to pristine ebooks, because it does matter!

However, for me what's most important is the overall book - not the cover, the gloss, the blurb, or the hype, but the interior, and what it says (or what the author clearly intended it to convey in the version they worked on!). What saved this book for me was that it's far too important to fly off the handle over poor formatting in review copy, so while I recommend it, I am going to point out examples of the main flaws I saw here for the record in the hopes that they will be fixed before any e-version is published.

Tables are not represented well in this version. Some of them appear right in the middle of the text with no separation, such as table 1.1 in the self-disclosure section. The result of this is that the table appears as though it's a part of the text, causing some sentences to end right in the middle, and then resume later, such as "...wife, though her eyes were dry..." in Chapter I step 5. There was a really bad example at location 593: "If you notice the patient appearing agitated or impatient each time a family My dad moved in with me over the Christmas holiday in 2012." 'Family' was completed three paragraphs later with 'member'. The 'My dad' portion was evidently an insert for a side bar or something like that.

There were also other oddball mixtures, such as Location 679 where there was a book reference and copyright notice to this book and author right in the middle of the text with what looked like a page number (38), but it's hard to tell what that was since there are no easily discernible page numbers in this e-version of the book. I don't read introductions (or prologues, prefaces, etc). I think they're antiquated, but as I was swiping past the intro to get to chapter one, I noticed that the lower case Roman numerals for the page numbers were in the middle of the screen rather than at the top or bottom. Some text was randomly in red "ink" such as " What are your goals related to the treatment and prevention of adverse effects of treatment?"

So, while I was disappointed that the presentation was not better, I was delighted with this book, which from my non-professional, but not uninformed PoV, looks to be an invaluable addition to resources any health care professional can call upon to enable them to do a better, more empathetic, and more caring job. The rainbow can only get brighter.

It is very exciting that more and more health care related research is done with LGBTQ issues in mind. I work in the healthcare field and see everyday how important it is to see the perspectives of different patients.
This guide does a very good job in simplifying the terminology and the topic in general so that every level of healthcare worker or caregiver can read it and understand it. There were some cultural differences in language use between the US and U.K., but it did not interfere with the over all understanding of the text.
The chapters were well organized and the patient perspective and discussion points at the end made the chapter easier to understand and reviewed it again.
I would definitely recommend this book to everybody who works in the healthcare area or is a caregiver to a loved one in the LGBTQ community.

With the increase of those in the LGBTQ community living openly and being allowed to legally marry in record numbers a book of this type has long been needed; although at the same time it’s a little disheartening there’s even a need for it. Last time I checked everyone dies the same way regardless of sexual preference so they shouldn’t be treated differently just because of who they’re in love with.

I felt the author provided unique insight and guidance into how to provide appropriate care when the time comes for this level particularly in best how to address someone such as the proper pronoun or relationship status. I like how she pointed out that the community doesn’t need “special care” as if they’re different from heterosexuals but instead need to be treated more inclusively.

She provides some very astute questions to ask yourself as the caregiver, discussion questions and perspectives from caregivers who provide their vast experience. Those in the field can learn a detailed process on how to provide the best patient interaction as well as educate themselves on practically everything to do with sex, gender, and its applications in the health field including how to ask about assigned birth gender, their true gender and the proper pronouns. She discusses the barriers the community historically has had in accessing proper care, how to take a comprehensive history, coordinate family meetings and how those dynamics can play out in decisions. You learn how to set goals, receive an overview on ethics and legal issues, and learn a variety of strategies on patient care, disease progression, pain and medication management, and signs of death. You’re also given a view on mental health related topics along with spiritual issues.

You can’t leave this book without learning something thanks to her in-depth objectives, key terms, summaries, points to remember, discussion questions and activities. All of which are great to use in team exercises to educate staff and fellow caregivers. She even provides additional resources to show the EXTREME amount of time, attention and detail that went into creating this and how the reader/student can find additional information.

It was still hard to read a quote by a professionally educated medical caregiver who openly declared their Christian faith with firm black and white beliefs which “dictate marriage is solely between a man and a woman.” Even if the nurse does claim she had an epiphany after caring for someone in a lesbian relationship which made her realize their relationship really wasn’t that different from any other couple. As someone with a deep and irrevocable tie to the community it was hard to feel happy that regardless of what her faith dictates the nurse claims she can still provide care for a community she openly admits to hold a prejudice towards. It’s like the separate but equal doctrine: it’s okay to discriminate against those you deem unequal to yourself as long as you provide the ‘same’ standard of care and say you are doing so out of ‘love’.

In some ways it’s people like that who need this book the most; those who are literally defining the quality of life for people who they don’t see as equals. Like I said, I’m bias when it comes to the LGBTQ community since I believe a person deserves quality care tailored to their medical needs and a caregiver’s belief system shouldn’t be a factor in what kind of care is administered.

This is the kind of book every hospital, nursing home, home health, hospice center, etc needs to have on hand, it should be required reading for all caregivers.

This is a welcome text in a speciality that has previously lacked a LGBTQ holistic perspective on all things palliative care. As an educator in the field in the U.K., all the chapters were relevant and provided insight, guidance and focus to providing appropriate care. There were some cultural differences in language use between the US and U.K., but that did not impede general understanding.

I particularly found useful the patient perspectives in each chapter and discussion questions. The consideration of overly-intrusive questions and family dynamics were insightful. Overall, I will recommend this texts to students as background reading and for more focused reading in other situations.

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher in return for a honest review.