General practitioner attitudes to discussing sexual health issues with older people
Section snippets
Background
Sexuality and old age are typically seen as incompatible. Dominant images of sexuality revolve around the youthful, healthy, beautiful body and represent a marked contrast with those associated with old age, invoking as they do physical decline, decrepitude and sickness. As such, later life has tended to be characterised as asexual, both within the popular imagination and in research and policy agendas. However, one of the first qualitative studies to involve older people directly in
Recruitment and characteristics of participants
A qualitative approach was chosen because little is known about GP's perceptions of later life sexual health management and because of the complex attitudinal and experiential data we wished to capture. In-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 22 GPs recruited from socio-economically diverse general practice surgeries in Sheffield in the North of England. Purposive sampling was used to maximise sample diversity, with the aim of recruiting approximately equal numbers of male and
What does ‘sexual health’ mean in primary care?
Initially, participants were asked to define sexual health from their perspective as GPs working within UK primary care practices, to provide a context for the subsequent discussion. The study participants interpreted the term ‘sexual health’ in varying ways. Although approximately one third adopted a strictly medical view of sexual health, the most common definition of the term also incorporated personal relationship issues, with a minority of participants not conceptualising sexual health
Discussion
This paper draws on the accounts of 22 GPs working in diverse practices in Sheffield, UK in order to explore how GPs perceive and manage the sexual health concerns of older people. Our findings support several conclusions. Overall it was evident that, despite recognition at a theoretical level that sexuality may remain important to people into later life, sexual health is not an issue proactively discussed by GPs with older patients. Reasons for this include, firstly that within primary care
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank all GPs who took part in the study for their time. This study was funded by an educational grant from Pfizer Ltd, Walton Oaks, Surrey, UK.
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