The Importance of Sexual History-Taking Within Surgery

Sexual and reproductive health is an essential part of comprehensive medical care. As the field of medicine becomes more specialized and siloed and the diagnostic workup in surgery more advanced, the risk of anchoring diagnoses and partitioning of care increases. Thus, the fundamentals of a complete patient history and review of each body system remain critical in ensuring that surgeons establish a broad differential diagnosis; provide comprehensive, well-rounded care to patients; and create opportunities for patient counseling and interventions. The article by Coleman and colleagues reports on an intervention that did not result in trainees being more likely to take a sexual history; however, the intervention group did ask significantly more questions regarding sexual health than the comparison group when they did take a sexual history. They highlight that there is a persistent gap in sexual history-taking, and that this results in potential misdiagnoses as well as missed opportunities to counsel patients about sexual and reproductive health. Clinicians have a responsibility to recognize factors that increase risk for their patients and provide appropriate counseling, which they cannot do if they are not asking all the necessary questions, even the difficult ones.