Health Care Students' Attitudes Toward Addressing Sexual Health in Their Future Profession: Validity and Reliability of a Questionnaire

Abstract

Method: A cross-sectional online survey (22 items) were distributed to 186 nursing, occupational therapy and physiotherapy students in Sweden, April 2015. Validity and reliability were tested. Results:The construct validity analysis led to three major factors: present feelings of comfortableness, future working environment and fear of negative influence on future patient relations. The construct validity, internal consistency reliability and intrarater reliability showed good results. Conclusion:The SA-SH is valid and reliable. IntroductionEarlier research has shown that patients with chronic conditions often rate their sexual health as important, but neglected by health care professionals (Bitzer, Platano, Tschudin, & Alder, 2007;Papaharitou et al., 2008), despite research showing that health care providers can moderate the sexual expression of persons suffering from chronic disease (O'Dea, Shuttleworth, & Wedgwood, 2012), and the patients have a right to have eventual sexual problems thoughtfully identified and addressed (Krebs, 2007). Maintaining professional boundaries is essential when working with sexual health, and students in health care professions need to have sufficient knowledge of how to work with sexual health and to feel confident that they are still upholding professional boundaries, despite the sensitive subject and the hands-on practice that nursing and rehabilitation often include (Soundy, Stubbs, Jenkins, & Cooper, 2013). There are several reasons that health care professionals avoid communicating with their patients about sexual health, including underestimation of the prevalence of decreased sexual health, embarrassment, and personal discomfort, together with lack of time, privacy, and competence (Haboubi & Lincoln, 2003;Helland, Garratt, Kjeken, Kvien, & Dagfinrud, 2013; Kirana et al., 2009;Krebs, 2007;McGrath & Lynch, 2014;Reynolds & Magnan, 2005). Gender, patient's age, personal values, and experiences influence students' attitudes toward sexual issues, and negative attitudes can impede effective sexual health consultations (Areskoug-Josefsson & Gard, 2015;Krebs, 2007). Awareness has to be raised of the students' own values and prejudices and knowledge of their attitudes towards working with sexual health, in order to address those issues with increased knowledge and competence (Krebs, 2007;Papaharitou et al., 2008;Sung, Huang, & Lin, 2015).Understanding of one's own personal sexual attitudes and previous communicative training are To investigate the attitudes of health care students towards working with sexual health in their future professions, there was a need to develop a new questionnaire. There are questionnaires used to explore university students' attitudes concerning sexuality, sexual preferences, and sexual activities as such, but they do not cover attitudes towards working with sexual health promotion (Nemcic et al., 2005;Reynolds & Magnan, 2005). There are also questionnaires aiming to explore the views of health professionals concerning communication and support to improve ...

Swedish Social Work Students’ Attitudes Toward Addressing Sexual Health Issues in Their Future Profession

“…The two age groups showed significant differences for six items (items 2, 5,9,12,16,21), where students older than 26 years had significantly higher scores ( Table 2).…”

“…The items in the questionnaire can be divided into four different domains, which are presented in boxplots. The analysis of semesters was based on a previous Latent Class Analysis of the SA-SH, consisting of three response patterns based on the total score of the SA-SH [21]. To create a total score, the responses (1-5) were summed up in all 22 variables.…”

“…This was a quantitative study using the Students' Attitudes toward Sexual Health (SA-SH) [21]. The SA-SH has shown good psychometric qualities when used in previous studies [14,21,22] and is reliable and valid to use also for social work students [23].…”

“…The SA-SH questionnaire addresses student attitudes toward addressing sexual health issues in their future profession. The SA-SH comprises 22 items distributed across four domains: present feelings of comfortableness, future working environment, fear of negative influence on future patient relations, and educational needs [21]. In addition there are descriptive questions related to gender, age, and educational level within the program included in the questionnaire.…”

Does a 2-Week Sexual Health in Rehabilitation Course Lead to Sustained Change in Students’ Attitudes?—A Pilot Study

“…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 – 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 ].…”