Addressing Older Adults' Sexual Health Needs in Regional Primary Care: A Qualitative Study of Barriers and Enablers.
Louise Bourchier, Lauren Ware, Meredith Temple-Smith and 3 others
PMID 41928420WHAT IT FOUND
Sexual health is important to older adults in regional Australia, but conversations with clinicians remain rare and ad-hoc.
Patients and clinicians both prefer GPs over nurses for these discussions. Barriers include stigma, lack of privacy in small towns, and time constraints.
Key findings
01Participants identified stigma, conservative attitudes, and confidentiality concerns in small communities as major barriers to discussing sexual health.
02Both older adults and clinicians expressed a preference for discussing sexual health with a GP rather than a Practice Nurse, citing privacy and perceived expertise.
03Sexual health conversations in regional primary care were described as occasional and ad-hoc, often arising incidentally from other screenings rather than being proactively initiated.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
Opt-in bias meant participants likely had a pre-existing interest in or comfort with sexual health topics. The sample was small and predominantly Caucasian, limiting generalisability to culturally diverse populations. Few nurses were included in the clinician group (2 Practice Nurses), which limits the understanding of nursing perspectives. The study is exploratory and qualitative, so it cannot determine the effectiveness of the proposed enablers.
Declared interests
The study was supported by a grant from the Australian Association of Gerontology. The authors declared no other conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret the preference for GPs over nurses as evidence that nurses are less competent. This is a perception among a small sample of participants, and the study explicitly notes that nurse-led models are advocated for improving access in other contexts.