Medical school sexual health curriculum and training in the United States.
BACKGROUND
With 19 million new sexually transmitted infections (STIs) annually and poor screening and counseling by physicians, there is a need to improve medical training in sexual health topics in the United States.


OBJECTIVE
To assess medical school sexual health curricula through student and faculty descriptions of training content, methods and effectiveness.


METHODS
Nationwide telephone survey of 500 fourth-year medical students (M4s) and medical school curriculum offices.


RESULTS
Many U.S. medical schools (41/92, 44%) lack formal sexual health curricula. Many medical students are uncomfortable taking sexual histories from 10-14-year-olds (87/499, 17.4%) and from adults > 75 years (119/498, 23.8%). Students who learned history-taking on patients were more likely (OR = 3.22) to be comfortable taking histories from 10-14-year-olds than those who did not. Risk reduction counseling was considered appropriate by more students than was risk avoidance counseling (99.4% vs. 74.2%, P < 0.001).


CONCLUSIONS
There are significant deficiencies in medical students' training on sexual health.
Malhotra
Sheetal
S
Medical Institute for Sexual Health, Austin, TX, USA. smalhotra@medinstitute.org
Khurshid
Anjum
A
Hendricks
Katherine A
KA
Mann
Joshua R
JR
D003479:Curriculum; D003625:Data Collection; D004501:Education, Medical; D012749:Sexually Transmitted Diseases; D014481:United States