The Views and Attitudes of Nurses on the Topic of Sexual Counseling

This study aims to determine the views and attitudes of nurses on sexual counseling. This qualitative study has been conducted with 103 nurses who work at a university hospital. Data have been gathered with a form developed by the researchers. In order to determine the level of competence, the Visual Analog Scale has been used, which is scored from 1 to 10. The SPSS 10.0 program has been used for data analysis. Data has been analyzed with the Mann–Whitney U and Chi-square tests techniques. Percentile distributions and means were also calculated. Only 17.5% of nurses previously performed sexual counseling and 88.9% of those did so without any request from the patient. Among those nurses, 72.2% perceived themselves as competent in the field and defined their level of proficiency as a mean 6.77 ± 51.79.27.8% were trained in the field of sexual problems and sexual counseling and 22.2% perceived their training in the field as sufficient.74.8% believed that their colleagues and themselves should receive specific training in the field and 63.1% demanded to receive this training. 55.6% reported that they referred patients to another health professional for sexual counseling when necessary. The average level of which nurses perceive themselves competent in providing sexual counseling is moderate and the level of which nurses can actually provide sexual counseling is insufficient. In order to prevent this problem, we recommend preparing training programs for nurses on sexual counseling which contain sufficient information.