Abstract
This pilot study aimed to explore if healthcare professional students participating in a 2-week elective course, Sexual Health in Rehabilitation (SHR), led to significant and sustained change in experienced competence and attitudes towards addressing sexual health in their future professions, when measured with the Students’ Attitudes towards Sexual Health-Danish version (SA-SH-D). Comparison-group design, using the SA-SH-D at baseline, after the 2 weeks course and 3 months after completing the course. Participation in the SHR course significantly changed the students’ attitudes; decreasing their fears of offending the patients and increasing their feelings of comfort in communicating about sexual health, and the results sustained during the follow-up period of 3 months. The results of the intervention suggest that a 2-week elective SHR course leads to sustained change healthcare students’ attitudes towards addressing sexual health in their future profession. Sexual health education positively changed the students’ attitudes, decreased their fears of offending the patients and increased their feelings of comfort in communicating about sexual health. The SA-SH-D is a useful tool to measure results of educational interventions aiming to change healthcare students’ attitudes towards addressing sexual health in their future profession. Future research is recommended regarding students’ attitudes towards addressing sexual health with persons living with disabilities. There is also a need to further research the effect of elective versus compulsory sexual health education in healthcare programs, to lessen the risk that healthcare students in their future profession will not be able to give equal care due to variation in competence and attitude.
Highlights
Sexual health is an important part of general health, implying the importance of promoting sexual health as a healthcare professional [1,2,3]
The students choosing to participate in the Sexual Health in Rehabilitation (SHR) course were not more prepared to address sexual health than students in the project leadership (PL) group
The few significant differences at baseline between the SHR and the PL group were found for the following questions: Question 4 I feel comfortable about discussing sexual health issues with future patients regardless of their sex, where the SHR group had a more positive attitude than the PL group (p = 0.045)
Summary
Sexual health is an important part of general health, implying the importance of promoting sexual health as a healthcare professional [1,2,3]. Previous research has shown a widespread lack of education concerning sexual health and personal attitudes together with the belief that sexual health is not important for persons with disease or disability, which may further problematize promotion of sexual health among healthcare professionals [10, 11]. Healthcare professionals and healthcare professional students agree that sexual health could be part of care and rehabilitation for patients, but that they experience lack of education concerning sexual health and communication about sexual health issues [12,13,14,15,16]. Healthcare students often have a high level of discomfort concerning communicating about sexual issues, implying the importance of sexual health education and communication about sensitive topics [17, 18]
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