The State of Sexual Health Education in U.S. Medicine

Abstract

Although studies have shown that patients want to receive sexual health services from their physicians, doctors often lack the knowledge and skills to discuss sexual health with their patients. There is little consistency among medical schools and residency programs in the United States regarding comprehensiveness of education on sexual health. Sexuality education in U.S. medical schools and residency programs is reviewed, highlighting schools that go beyond the national requirements for sexuality education. Increasing the amount of sexuality instruction provided for medical education and training, standardizing sexuality education requirements in medical school and residency programs, incorporating different learning models, establishing means of consistently assessing and evaluating sexuality knowledge and skills, and creating national certification standards for the practice of sexual medicine are recommended.

Educational Strategies to Help Students Provide Respectful Sexual and Reproductive Health Care for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Persons

“…Cultural competence is a set of congruent behaviors, attitudes, and policies that come together to enable effective work in cross‐cultural situations . A key component of most health care professional education programs, cultural competence

content may or may not specifically include education about gender, sexual, and reproductive health care concerns in addition to racial and ethnic differences …”

“…content may or may not specifically include education about gender, sexual, and reproductive health care concerns in addition to racial and ethnic differences. 8,11,12 In 2012 the American College of Nurse-Midwives (ACNM) Core Competencies for Basic Midwifery Practice were revised and approved. 13 One of the changes to the ACNM Core Competencies included the requirement that midwives apply "knowledge, skills, and abilities in gynecologic care that include .…”

Human Sexuality Education in Marriage and Family Therapy Graduate Programs

“…It is interesting to note that more participants endorsed gay/lesbian/bisexual issues as a topic of primary importance in MFT training than “parenting and sexuality” or “adolescent sexuality.” This may reflect in part a bias that issues of diversity in sexuality should be emphasized more than other topics in sexuality. Although training in sexual diversity is important, graduate education for MFT students should also include core topics in sexuality, such as how sexual issues become manifest in any type of family or relationship, and how marriage and family therapists can help clients as needed, and even basic human sexuality topics such as reproduction and anatomy (e.g., see Coleman et al., ; Criniti, Andelloux, Woodland, Montgomery, & Hartmann, ). Furthermore, awareness of sexual diversity may not be sufficient for graduate students to feel competent in addressing sexual matters in therapy.…”

“…There is also the risk that sexual health is only taught as something to be addressed in therapy when there is a problem–versus discussing sexuality as a part of normal human development and an important part of any person's identity and overall well‐being (Berglas, Constantine, & Ozer, ). Leading scholars have suggested that a model sexual health curriculum in higher education should include sexual well‐being (Coleman et al., ; Criniti et al., ).…”

“…It is possible that these are MFT programs with exemplary sexual health training, which could be informative to other MFT program directors. Given the barriers noted by other participants and barriers to sexual health education noted in other areas of higher education (Coleman et al., ; Criniti et al., ), it is also possible that some participants, due to busy schedules, did not take time to consider fully barriers in their programs. Some participants may have given socially desirable responses or have biased views of how sexual health education occurs in their program.…”