Sex Ed for Med: An Inclusive Sexual History Curriculum for Medical Trainees

Introduction Medical students note multiple barriers to eliciting an inclusive sexual history: discomfort with the topic, lack of training, inadequate time, and bias. Additionally, medical students are less comfortable taking histories from LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer) patients. This discomfort among future providers may prevent sexual and gender minority patients from disclosing important health information and presents a barrier to patient-centered medical care. To address these knowledge gaps in sexual education in medical school, we created a curriculum to help first-year medical students gain comfort taking LGBTQ-inclusive sexual histories. Our resource was piloted at Emory School of Medicine. Methods Our educational intervention was implemented over 2 weeks and consisted of large- and small-group sessions, a prerecorded video, and standardized patient encounters for first-year medical students. After completing the mandatory curriculum, medical students voluntarily completed a survey to evaluate the curriculum's effectiveness in achieving each learning objective. Results One hundred forty students participated in the curriculum, and 41 students responded to the postcurriculum survey (29.3% response rate). Students most strongly agreed that the curriculum taught them ways to elicit a nonjudgmental, patient-centered sexual history while also helping them reflect on their own attitudes toward sexuality and gender. Discussion Participant surveys show that our curriculum of formative small-group skill-building exercises, lectures, and student-curated sessions increased students’ self-reported knowledge related to sexual history taking, especially regarding counseling of LGBTQ patients. This project highlights the importance of comprehensive LGBTQ+-inclusive curricula to enhance sexual education training for medical students.