Sex training for doctors

I recently spoke to a number of doctors of many ages and asked all of them whether they had had sex training as part of their medical education.  The universal response was 'no'.

I was involved in the sex training of doctors and administrators for a decade in the 1970s. I was also a founder, in the same period, of the San Francisco Sex Information hot line. Sex training for doctors was developed by the National Sex and Drug Forum a project of Glide Memorial Church where I was business manager. The project was led by Rev. Ted McIlvenna.  It began with the goal of protecting gay street hustlers.  It became immediately evident that there were no professionals who understood human sexuality.

Ted began preparing training materials to use for teaching ministers and doctors about human sexuality in their professional schools. Materials included many films and even more experts in the many subsets of the sex field.

Ted went on to create the Institute for the Advancd Study of Human Sexuality which was the first Institute to grant PhD's in the field.

I was involved in several of the films for the training material and was on the state committee to certify the PhD program.

Doctors and ministers never really had much of an idea about human sexuality, so this training was vital. The training was also superb allowing professionals to deal of sex issues comfortably. Comfortably was not something that existed before, nor seems to exist today. I recall being told by several doctors not to have sex with my pregnant wife for the month or two before delivery. Absurd: a medical caution with no justification. There are more than a dozen similar pieces of medical mythology

I should not have been surprised at the disappearance of human sexuality training for doctors. Our United States is a Puritan country in its deepest most fundamental recesses. It remains a tragedy that we no longer have professionals trained to deal with human sexuality.

And the general level of knowledge about human sexuality is not any higher today than it was in 1965. Not one iota higher.