Historically there have been clear social, political, professional, and personal ramifications for clinicians, especially physicians, who come out publicly as queer. Many medical students and residents continue to experience stigma due to their sexual identity. This historical examination of queer visibility in health care suggests that the systematic medicalization of homosexuality is an active force in the propagation of a culture of invisibility for queer health care providers. In the health care field, most research in queer visibility has centered on patients coming out to their health care provider. The lack of research on visibility among queer clinicians precludes increased professional awareness and surreptitiously feeds the invisibility of queer health care providers working among a general population. Queer visibility is problematic for health care providers: Visibility as a group is critical to a full articulation of queers as providers of health care, yet there are many repercussions for individual health care providers who are out to peers or patients. Remaining closeted may cut queer health care providers out of important social networks in their profession, yet coming out could lead to the same consequences. For individual providers, coming out to patients may be obtrusive and unnecessary to the health care interaction. In an attempt to balance these aspects of visibility, coming out to patients is posited as conceptually critical to a full realization of queer identities in health care, but the impact of visibility is understood to be moderated by contextual factors.
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