Week 20: Sexual Medicine!

Now here's a topic you don't get exposed to typically in medical school so much as life in general as well. The irony here is that we have 35 hours of lecture in this one week of sexual medicine than we had for the entire six weeks of gross anatomy! I guess we're kind of delinquent in this subject that is too socially taboo to discuss.

Well the taboo nature of it is gone as we learned the ins and outs of sexual health from intimacy, healthcare, stigma, culture, slang, gender issues, sexuality, disorders, offenders, and even law in the week long first week of our block four leadership block. It was actually quite interesting as not only did we have lecturers, but more impressively panels of guests. Included in these panels was a teen panel from Planned Parenthood discussing how nearly 50% of their peers were sexually active, also a couple with sexual dysfunction and their story of it (we also received their book), a panel of a sexual assault crisis team including a rape nurse, victim advocate, prosecutor, probation officer, and police sergeant. On the flip side we also had two sex offenders come in to talk to us which really chapped my hide as these guys got off easy with only 12 months in prison. 90% of sex offenders go unreported as these guys attested of that as they admitted they were chronic offenders for decades and only got busted for their last offense a few years ago. So according to the wonderful Minnesotan legal system here they only got 12 months in prison and are now on probation. What kind of messed up system do we live in here!!? I mean to contrast, if I as a physician have a romantic relationship with a patient I face 10-15 years in prison and a $20,000-$30,000 fine and loss of licensure, whereas if I go molest little boys I get off with virtually a slap on the wrist!! I'm buying a shotgun for Christmas and Mikey's never going to have a male babysitter (as 90% of sex offenders are male too).

We had a bunch of interesting lectures on geriatric sexual health (how elderly never stop having sex), transgenderism and GLBT (very interesting panel! (the man who was born a woman had me totally deceived), and interesting hands on workshops on contraceptive usage and solutions to sexual dysfunction (sex toys). Well I'm glad those 35 hours are over, but admittedly I learned about sexual health a lot more in this one week than I ever did in my cumulative education… I mean 10th grade health was taught by Coach Barnes!? - I wonder why we didn't learn very much...