Abstract
Objective: to understand the difficulties and facilities of professionals to notify sexual partners with sexually transmitted infections. Methods: qualitative study carried out with 19 professionals from four referral services in sexually transmitted infections. A semistructured interview was conducted and the statements were analyzed through Content Analysis technique. Results: the difficulties identified were: diversity of types of sexual relationships, resistance of the index patient, emphasis on information transmission, ineffective verbal communication, insufficient time and absence of monitoring. The facilities were: respect for patient autonomy, counseling free of judgments, effective verbal communication, motivation and negotiation, written communication, confidential environment, partnership with the multiprofessional team, communication through card to evaluate effectiveness of notification. Conclusion: based on the competencies, communication was identified as a facilitator of empowerment of the index patient in the process of to reveal the infection to the contacts, and weaknesses emerged in the conduct of cases about the knowledge, planning, implementation, partnership and evaluation.
Highlights
Notification of sexual partners is an essential public health intervention for the control of Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs), as it helps to interrupt infections and reinfections, as well as prevent complications(1)
As for the way used for notification, 17 performed it verbally, informing the index patient about the need for their sexual partners to attend the service
There was no establishment of a time frame for the index patient to report the infection to the sexual partner and neither was determined the time interval for the partner to attend the service
Summary
Notification of sexual partners is an essential public health intervention for the control of Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs), as it helps to interrupt infections and reinfections, as well as prevent complications(1). It is a means by which STI patients, named index patient, understand the need for their sexual partners to be referred to the service for diagnosis and treatment, when necessary(2). It is recommended that professionals be aware of the safety and preference of index patients for the most effective means of communication and the challenges involved in locating partners(2) In this context, effective communication between professionals and index patients is an important action for the success of notification of partners. This may contribute to the empowerment of index patients about their illness and the understanding of the consequences of non-inclusion of sexual partners in the care plan(5)
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