Provider Comfort Exercise

Asking questions in a counseling session related to HIV/AIDS can be difficult because it involves discussing very intimate behaviors, which can be embarrassing for the client and counselor alike.

During a staff meeting, ask staff members to close their eyes. Read the questions listed below aloud to them, and ask them to respond silently to the questions, without sharing any of their responses with others. The idea is to provide an opportunity for health care providers to experience how it may feel for clients to be asked sensitive questions about their sexual lives and to consider ways that they can make clients feel more comfortable discussing such issues.

Sample questions:

• How many sexual partners have you had in the past three years?
• When you have sex, what kind of sex do you have? Anal? Oral? Vaginal?
• Do you ever use condoms?
• How do you feel about your current or most recent relationship with a partner?
• Who decides when and how you will have sex?
• Do you think that your partner may have other sexual partners?
• Have you ever talked to your partner about your sexual life in general?
• Have you ever talked to your partner about STIs, including HIV/AIDS?
• As far as you know, have you ever had an STI?

Facilitate a discussion about how staff members felt responding to the questions and how they think that clients might react to being asked similar questions. Discuss strategies for asking questions in a nonthreatening way and communicating comfort and trust to clients.