Yeah, I think there's a large amount of "attitude is everything" with respect to provider/patient sexual health discussions. It's part of a provider's responsibility to make sure they're doing their best to support their patients' sexual health. This vary often includes making sure patients are appropriately educated about condom use as well as other contraceptive and STI-reduction choices.
That said, I think (as an educator) that a crucial part of education is making sure information is presented in a way that's accessible, engaging, and relevant to the other people involved. Making negative assumptions, making a patient feel guilty for choosing other options, or otherwise "pushing" one's own opinion onto others generally runs counter to truly educating.
I've had a couple of really good providers who've done this well. For instance, a few years ago, when first asking about an IUD, my NP learned that I was using FAM as birth control. It's a method with a statistically higher typical use rate and a method that tends to have at least its fair share of negative perceptions. When asking about doing a pregnancy test prior to IUD insertion, she worded it like, "Just because pregnancy tests are quick and painless and because it could be really bad to insert an IUD if you are pregnant, I think it's a good idea to test, just to know for sure," and not as, "Since you're not on the pill, there's no way to know you're not pregnant right now except to test," or something similar.
Similarly, earlier this month, I asked my doctor about fitting me for a diaphragm. (I no longer have the IUD and am back to using FAM.) When I asked, he started out saying, "They're not something I generally recommend because they can be harder to use correctly, which can lead to them being less effective." When I explained all the methods I'd tried and all the reasons they didn't work for me or my partner, he went, "Huh. Yeah, this might be your best option."
I was going somewhere meaningful with this. Really, I was. But those stories took a while to type out, and so now I've forgotten.
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-11-23 05:07 am (UTC)That said, I think (as an educator) that a crucial part of education is making sure information is presented in a way that's accessible, engaging, and relevant to the other people involved. Making negative assumptions, making a patient feel guilty for choosing other options, or otherwise "pushing" one's own opinion onto others generally runs counter to truly educating.
I've had a couple of really good providers who've done this well. For instance, a few years ago, when first asking about an IUD, my NP learned that I was using FAM as birth control. It's a method with a statistically higher typical use rate and a method that tends to have at least its fair share of negative perceptions. When asking about doing a pregnancy test prior to IUD insertion, she worded it like, "Just because pregnancy tests are quick and painless and because it could be really bad to insert an IUD if you are pregnant, I think it's a good idea to test, just to know for sure," and not as, "Since you're not on the pill, there's no way to know you're not pregnant right now except to test," or something similar.
Similarly, earlier this month, I asked my doctor about fitting me for a diaphragm. (I no longer have the IUD and am back to using FAM.) When I asked, he started out saying, "They're not something I generally recommend because they can be harder to use correctly, which can lead to them being less effective." When I explained all the methods I'd tried and all the reasons they didn't work for me or my partner, he went, "Huh. Yeah, this might be your best option."
I was going somewhere meaningful with this. Really, I was. But those stories took a while to type out, and so now I've forgotten.