Providing Comprehensive Sexual Health Care in Spinal Cord Injury Rehabilitation: Implementation and Evaluation of a New Curriculum for Health Care Professionals

A grant from the Paralyzed Veterans of America funded the development, implementation, and evaluation of a three-day interdisciplinary continuing education and training program in comprehensive sexual health care. The program was targeted toward health care professionals working in spinal cord injury (SCI) rehabilitation. The major goal of the program was to offer participants an opportunity to increase the knowledge, comfort, and skills necessary to understand and manage the sexual health care needs of people with SCI. The curriculum included clearly stated goals, behavioral objectives in operational terms, and multiple quantitative and qualitative program evaluations. In addition, the comprehensive curriculum incorporated extensive skills training including state-of-the-art standardized patient training techniques. Evaluation results indicated statistically significant and qualitatively important positive gains in knowledge, comfort, and skills. The five month follow-up study indicated that skills learned over the three-day workshop were successfully transferred to the work environment.