Before Reading Week I went to an awesome event put on by the Women’s Centre, RyePride and RyeAccess: Sexability. The theme of this event was to challenge the heterosexual and able-bodied view that society has when it comes to sex – as in, the only sexual people are the “normal” heterosexual and able-bodied persons. I knew after reading the event description that it would be an excellent dialogue and I definitely wanted to participate, especially since I had realized that people do not view those with disabilities as sexual beings.
The event started with the professor reading a story about two people with disabilities living in a nursing home. These two people (a man and a woman) had started a dating relationship and asked if they could receive assistance for having sexual relations since they were unable to position themselves in order to do so. My first reaction, as a nursing student, was “Sure, why not?” However, the professor stated that not everyone feels the same way, which surprised me. I mean, humans are sexual beings and people with disabilities are humans, so obviously they’re sexual too, right? Well apparently not everyone has the same thinking about it that I do.
Some of the main ideas that came out of the dialogue included how people with disabilities are not viewed as sexual beings; how their sex lives would become “medicalized” if health car providers were to assist them with carrying out their sexual relations; and how the health care system itself seems to have no room for sex in it.
In regards to the couple at the nursing home, many people at the event agreed that certain health care professionals (such as nurses) should receive additional training for assisting people with their sex lives. As a future health care professional, I stated that I would not have any issues with getting extra training, and that I thought it was a good idea. The health care system emphasizes providing patients with holistic care, meaning tending to not just their physical needs but also their psychological, social, emotional, and spiritual as well. Plus sex is a physical need that we as humans have, so is it not part of our job then to empower our patients to fulfill their sexual needs? Then a woman who was sitting beside me in a wheelchair stated that she felt like allowing health care professionals to be present for an act that is usually intimate and private between two (or more) people would be “medicalizing” sex for those people. Others in the audience agreed with that good point, and it made me reconsider my perspective from the patient’s point of view too, not just as a student nurse. One of the workers at the Women’s Centre stated that if she was in that position and there had to be someone there, she would want it to be a health care provider because that person is a professional. The idea of having a health care provider there as required did not bother her. I then said that as a future nurse, I did not feel like I would be awkward if I were to be the health care provider helping people with their sexual relations. Overall, I think those who are able-bodied can only speculate about issues like this, since someone such as myself who is without a disability obviously does not know what it could or would be like. Most of us did agree though that it would be a good idea in general to provide the extra training for health care professionals to assist people with having sex.
Something else I realized as a nursing student was that I was more than halfway through my second year, and thus almost halfway through my undergraduate degree, and there had been next-to-no mention of sex. For example, we have two clinical care plan assignments to do in second year that are over 20 pages long, and nowhere among the self-concept, interdependence, role function, and even physiological modes was there any mention of sex. You’d think that if it was anywhere, it’d be in the patient’s care plans we were making up. Again, humans are sexual beings and the health care system claims that it provides holistic care, so why were the sexualities and sexual needs not being addressed? In two weeks we will be learning in my concepts class about “sexuality”, even though there is no chapter in our class textbook on it. Why would that be? Because it’s awkward to talk about sex? So how are we, as nursing students, supposed to talk to our patients about the “uncomfortable” topic of sex when our instructors do not teach us how to, and don’t even teach the topic to us? With a nursing curriculum that excludes sex like this, it’s no wonder why some health care providers would be uncomfortable helping patients fulfill their sexual relations. I’ll see how the concepts class on sexuality goes and perhaps write a post to follow up, but something tells me that I’ll feel like the topics of sex and sexuality weren’t adequately covered in the lecture. The lack of sex in the curriculum and health care overall is something that should be brought to the attention of nursing educators, health care providers and the health care system.
~ Tasha
