14 “I don’t have the right training to address it”: Health professionals discuss sexual health in paediatric rehabilitation
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Background Many healthcare professionals do not feel confident and competent caring for and supporting hospitalized youth with chronic conditions and disabilities with regards to their sexual development. Typically, preventative aspects of sexual health are discussed, at the expense of normalizing and supporting adaptations. Objectives An exploratory study was conducted in a paediatric rehabilitation center to better understand the needs of an interdisciplinary rehabilitation team, related to sexual health support of their patients. Design/Methods A mixed method online questionnaire was completed anonymously. Participants were asked how often they discussed sexual health with their patients as well their degree of confidence during these encounters. They were also presented with short vignettes about situations related to sexual development in health and disability and asked to rate their sense of competence. Descriptive statistics and thematic analysis were used. Results From May to August 2024, 28 participants from 9 different professions (physicians, nurses, occupational therapists, physiotherapists, psychologists, educators) completed the questionnaire. Most of them (57 %) had more than 10 years of experience in paediatrics. Almost two thirds (61 %) had experienced at least one intervention related to sexual health issues but felt uncomfortable or not comfortable at all: “I usually speak about school and personal hygiene but not sexual health systematically”. While participants felt competent discussing sexual orientation, gender identity, fertility issues and masturbation were the themes they felt less skilled with: “I feel like our patients deserve adequate answers”. Most wish to participate in sexual health training (89 %): “learning more about the sexual health needs of youth with handicaps just makes sense” and would appreciate a sex therapist joining the team (96 %): “I would love for a sex therapist to be able to consult with us”. Conclusion There is a demonstrated need for training and support in sexual health for healthcare providers working with hospitalized teenagers. This exploratory study confirmed a general sense of unease and highlighted the need for overall training. This is particularly worrisome as rehabilitation specialists are looked to as authorities in activities of daily living in disability. The study will continue in different care settings with diverse patient populations to create a dedicated sexual health training curriculum.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.009 | 0.018 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.007 | 0.004 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.009 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".