Students' perception and experience of intimate area examination and sexual history taking during undergraduate clinical skills training: A study from two Saudi medical colleges.
Hamza Mohammad Abdulghani, Shafiul Haque, Mohammad Irshad, Noor Al-Zahrani, Eman Al-Bedaie, Latifah Al-Fahad, Manar Al-Eid, Abdulrahman Al-Mohaimeed
Author Information
Hamza Mohammad Abdulghani: Department of Medical Education, College of Medicine, King Saud University, Riyadh Research and Scientific Studies Unit, College of Nursing and Allied Health Sciences, Jazan University, Jazan Department of Family & Community Medicine, College of Medicine, Qassim University, Qassim, Saudi Arabia.
This study explores the experiences of Saudi undergraduate medical students about intimate-area examination (IAE) and sexual history taking (SHT) skills and assesses the barriers and their impacts on students' learning. This survey-based study was performed at 2 Saudi university medical colleges and revealed that most of the students never performed IAE, that is, female breast, male genital, female genital, female pelvic, male rectal, and female rectal. We found that 42.3% students had never taken any sexual history during their course. Both, male and female students reported barriers of patient refusal, mismatched sex, cultural background, ethical factors, lack of supervision, lack of training, and lack of skills. Among the currently used pedagogical techniques, majority of the students were satisfied with real patient-based learning, followed by video and manikin-based learning. The study indicates that Saudi students do not have sufficient experience of IAE and SHT because of above-mentioned barriers along with religious issues. This study suggests that teachers provide positive support to students and that they develop novel, competent teaching-and-learning techniques to meet the skills training of students without compromising on religious, sociocultural, and ethical values of the kingdom.
