Making It Work!

This section is designed to help you find ways to apply the content of the modules to your everyday work. The following links will take you to pages in the “Making It Work” sections within each module. To return to this page, use the “back” button on your browser. Use the navigation within the module’s “Making It Work” section to review that module’s content.

Please note: There are no Making It Work items for this module.

1. Glossary of Terms. Download or print out the following glossary for this course for reference purposes or to share with your staff or colleagues.
• Online version
2. Tips and Educational Activities.

1. Improving Your Service. Hold client chart-review sessions periodically and identify “missed opportunities” for exploring sexuality issues pertinent to providing comprehensive care. Discuss strategies for maximizing the next client visit. Identify opportunities that were taken to incorporate sexuality into the care given and share the outcomes.
2. Tips and Educational Activities. Prepare unit update sessions by asking staff members to anonymously list their thoughts, questions, and feelings about sexuality in relation to the situations covered in this module, as well as situations that they encounter in their work, their community, or their life. Hold update sessions covering this content.
3. Educational Aids. The following materials, optimized for printing, can be used in conducting staff education or client counseling:
   • Mastectomy
   • Hysterectomy
   • Prostate disease
   • Female genital cutting (FGC)
   • Male circumcision
   • Sociosexual development through the life cycle
   • Stages of female and male sexual development

1. Improving Your Service. Hold meetings with staff to include this content as a unit update. Explore with staff how this content can be integrated into the current services. Identify points in history taking that lend themselves to exploring sexual responses and providing information on the range of normal responses. Ask staff to identify sexual practices in their communities or among their clientele that might involve sexual misinformation or put clients at risk of infection. Build exploration of sexual response and practices into STI and HIV prevention counseling to help clients protect themselves or prevent continued exposure to infectious organisms.
2. Tips and Educational Activities. Develop health education sessions to cover sexual responses and changes with age for clients. Identify local sexual practices that may conflict with the sexual response cycle or put couples at risk of genital trauma or infection.
3. Educational Aids. The following materials, optimized for printing, can be used in conducting staff education or client counseling:
   • Glossary of common sexual practices
   • The sexual response cycle
   • Comparison of sexual response in women and men
   • Normal changes in response with aging
   • Contraception and sexual function
   • Drugs that affect sexual function and response
   • Health risks of common sexual practices

1. Sexual Dysfunction Reference Sheet. This link lists common causes of dysfunction and their treatment, and can be used as a reference during client visits.
2. Improving Your Services. Hold meetings with staff to include this content as a unit update to help providers differentiate between sexual concern and sexual dysfunction. Conduct chart reviews as a way to identify history and physical examination findings that would indicate appropriate exploration into the client’s level of satisfaction with his or her sexual function. Identify consistent history and physical exam “triggers” that should clue the provider into exploring the client’s sexuality. Build these skills into the supervisory support system. Build into sexual and reproductive health care services the exploration of sexual dysfunction to help clients recognize the variation of normalcy and true dysfunction.
3. Tips and Educational Activities. Develop health education sessions to cover sexual dysfunctions and their therapies.
4. Educational Aids. The following materials, optimized for printing, can be used in conducting staff education or client counseling:
   • Sexual dysfunctions, causes, and treatments

1. Talking with Clients: An Example. Review this example of how addressing sexuality during services can benefit a client.
2. Probing: Asking Specific Questions. Examples of the questions to ask when discussing sexuality with all clients, prenatal and postpartum clients, clients seeking contraception, and clients who present with STIs.
3. Tips and Educational Activities. Using the information presented in the “Making It Work” pages throughout this minicourse, develop staff orientations, trainings, and client-education materials.
4. Begin to incorporate a sexual and reproductive health approach to service delivery by:
• Including questions about sexual functioning during client visits
• Including questions about sexual orientation, current level of sexual activity, level of satisfaction with sex life, and concerns
• Providing pamphlets about sexuality relevant to age and sex
• Referring to the specific conditions and medications that can cause sexual difficulties, when appropriate
• Repeating inquiries about sexual concerns at more than one visit to facilitate discussion of sexual matters
• Paying attention to the client’s nonverbal cues of embarrassment, tension, or withdrawal during discussion
• Presenting information and asking questions in a relaxed, nonjudgmental manner

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