(50) Evaluation of an educational video assessing knowledge and attitudes of transgender youth on fertility preservation

Background: While hormone therapy and surgery can be used to help alleviate gender dysphoria in transgender individuals, such treatments may negatively impact fertility. Multiple organizations have highlighted the importance of counselling on infertility risk, as well as offering fertility preservation (FP) prior to therapy. To supplement fertility preservation discussions, whiteboard videos were created to explain FP and to provide an additional educational tool for transgender youth and their families. This study assessed: (1)The understandability, actionability, and readability of the FP educational videos; (2)Patient perceptions, knowledge, barriers, and interest in FP; and (3) Overall satisfaction with patient education videos on FP

Methods: Participants (age 12 to 18) were enrolled at the Gender Diversity Clinic of our tertiary care pediatric centre. Patients had to complete a short online baseline survey (pre-video survey) assessing their knowledge, perceptions and overall thoughts on FP. They were then sent a link to an online educational video on FP (based on sex assigned at birth). Finally, participants had to complete a short post-video survey assessing their knowledge and thoughts on FP and their feedback on the educational video presented. Descriptive statistics were used. IRB approval was obtained.

Results: Twenty-one participants were enrolled in the study. Fifteen participants completed the pre-video survey, twelve completed the post-video knowledge survey and ten completed the video feedback survey (completion rates of 71.4%, 57.1% and 47.6% respectively). The mean age of participants was 15.50 (SD = 1.34), with the majority being in high school (81.2%). In the pre-video survey, one participant (1/15; 6.7%) rated their knowledge of FP as “very good” or “good” (1/15; 6.7%) compared to ten participants (10/12; 83.3%) in the post-video survey (p = 0.039) suggesting a significant improvement in perceived knowledge on FP. Feedback regarding the videos was overwhelmingly positive: 8/10 (80.0%) participants found the video to be helpful, 9/10 (90.0%) were satisfied with the video, 9/10 (90.0%) understood the video, and 10/10 (100.0%) reported FP to be an important topic.

Conclusions: Our results suggest that targeted patient education aids, such as a whiteboard educational video on FP, can be supplement fertility discussions with gender diverse youth.