Patients’ Sexual Health: A Qualitative Research Approach on Greek Nurses’ Perceptions

Abstract

Introduction Health care professionals, especially nurses, through their contact with patients, play an important role in encouraging discussions about sexual concerns. Aim To explore perceptions on sexual health issues and how these might inhibit or enhance Greek nurses’ ability to incorporate sexual health assessment into everyday practice. Main Outcome Measures A discussion guide was used as checklist to ensure that the basic issues would be addressed. Topics related to the areas of interest were either brought up from the participants or introduced by the moderator. Methods The study recruited a purposive sample of 44 Greek staff nurses (SN) attending a course leading to their professional upgrading. A qualitative research design was employed using seven focus groups. Discussions started with nurses’ perceived definitions of sexual health and proceeded with open-ended questions. Transcripts were analyzed using thematic analysis based on the principles of grounded theory. Results Three central themes were identified from transcripts’ thematic analysis: subjective perception of sexual health, discussing sexual problems, and educational and training needs. Participants’ perceptions of sexual health centred mainly on the emotional and somatic dimensions. Regarding clinical practice, a variety of personal and contextual reasons limit nurses’ willingness to talk about sexuality with patients, such as gender and age differences, familial upbringing, lack of time and privacy, and restricted perception of nursing role. All nurses stressed the need for further specialized training not only in physiology issues related to sexuality, but also most importantly in communication skills. Conclusions Although Greek nurses acknowledge the importance of sexual health assessment, they believe that sexual history taking is not within the range of their professional tasks. Since holistic care demands sexual health assessment and intervention to be an integral part of nursing practice, it is necessary to introduce courses in their curriculum and experiential workshops addressing the multidimensionality of sexuality.

Application of PLISSIT Counseling Model for Women with Cervical Cancer Undergoing Treatment on Enhancing Sexuality

“…The majority of these problems can be treated in early stages with counseling and a few numbers of them need to be treated by specialists. [30] The finding of the current study regarding sociodemographic characteristics of the studied group, the current results revealed that more than half of cervical cancer women age 40 -< 50 years, with a mean age of 42.11±10.02 years. This result was in the same line with Aktin and Ahmad (2014).…”

The 5-As Framework for Including Sexual Concerns in Mental Health Nursing Practice

“…Awareness-building is concerned with assisting nurses to overcome personal sexual feelings, behaviours, beliefs, attitudes, and knowledge that strongly influence the practice of nursing (Nakopoulou et al, 2009) and legitimising the importance of sexual health for nurses (Higgins, Barker, & Begley, 2006b;Krebs, 2007). From here, nurses are given Approval to engage with consumers on the topic.…”

“…There is widespread avoidance of sexual health concerns (McCann, 2010;Nakopoulou, Papaharitou, & Hatzichristou, 2009;Quinn, Happell, & Brown, 2011a), notable absence of content in nursing curricula (French, 2010;Montura et al, 2001;Shell, 2007), and absence of any reference in professional practice standards to nursing competency in Models of clinical practice have been developed to include human sexuality in nursing care (Anderson, 1990;Mick, Hughes, & Cohen, 2004;Schain, 1988;Annon, 1976;Taylor & Davis, 2006) with most progress toward addressing sexual health concerns in nursing practice occurring within the clinical speciality of Oncology. The purpose of this paper is to present and describe the development of the 5-As framework for including sexual concerns in mental health nursing practice.…”

Relationship Between the Knowledge, Attitude, and Self-Efficacy on Sexual Health Care for Nursing Students

“…A variety of personal and contextual reasons are given as self-limiters with respect to nurses' willingness to address patients' sexuality concerns. Issues such as age and gender differences, lack of time, privacy, and knowledge and training on dealing with sexual dysfunction, and restricted perception of nursing role, discomfort, work environment-related issues, have been found by other researches (Huang, Tsai, Tseng, Li, & Lee, 2013;Kotronoulas, Papadopoulou, & Patiraki, 2009;Nakopoulou, Papaharitou, & Hatzichristou, 2009;Nicolai et al, 2013;Sung, Yeh, & Lin, 2010).…”

“…Furthermore, Tsai et al (2013) found that nursing students' learning needs for addressing patients' sexual health care included knowledge of sexuality in health and illness, communication skills of discussing patients' intimacy, and ways to provide sexual health care. Moreso, in addition to physical issues associated with sexuality, nurses and nursing students stressed the need of further specialized training in preparing attitude to approach and selfconfidence to communication behavior (Nakopoulou et al, 2009;Sung & Lin, 2013).…”