Background

In a recent issue of the Journal, I wrote about the importance of enrolling all health professionals in the field of intimate health – in opening the conversation, in diagnosing, referring on, supporting every patient to have a good sex life.1 But, of course, there's an additional issue here. We need to not only enrol health professionals in the cause, but also enrol patients themselves. We need to make sure that when patients have an intimate question they are able to mention it to us, discuss it with us, then take our advice on board. So what stops patients bringing us their issues? Conversely, what enables them to do so? And what would make it easier for them to start the dialogue? It's time for another Consumer Correspondent survey.

Where asking questions isn't a problem

When I began the survey, the first thing that encouraged me was that I had no difficulty in finding respondents to what they soon began calling ‘The Cringe Report’. Certainly my contacts, professional and personal, were drawn from a pool of fairly relaxed and uninhibited people, but even so I was gratified to gather 20 eager folk within just a few hours of sending out my invitation e-mail. Unsurprisingly, fewer men than women were prepared to disclose intimate details. More surprisingly, the age range of my respondents was perfectly balanced from those in their early 20s through to those in their late 60s.

“Unsurprisingly, fewer men than women were prepared to disclose intimate details.”

The second encouraging thing was the number (7) who said that they didn't feel able to contribute to my survey because they personally had never had a problem approaching any health professional about any intimate matter whatsoever. Some explained that it was simply in their nature to be “so upfront that [I] have no becoming modesty”. …