Nurses' approaches towards sexuality of adolescent patients in Turkey

The purpose of this study is to determine the approaches regarding sexuality of nurses caring for adolescent patients in Turkey.

The sample includes nurses caring for adolescent patients in hospitals located in major cities of Turkey. There were 571 responses from the 783 nurses who were given the questionnaire. The questionnaire consists of three sections. The instrument used in this study was developed by Wall-Haas. Multiple analyses of variance in SPSS version 11.5 was used in the comparison of the scores obtained from the instrument.

Approximately 69% of nurses stated that concerns about sexuality should be a routine component of nursing care; 70.5% of nurses stated that nursing interventions dealing with concerns about sexuality increases the patient's well being. About 70% stated that discussing sexual issues with children is the responsibility of their parents. Half of the nurses had difficulty in initiating a discussion about sexuality with their patients.

The findings in this study point out that the nurses' approaches towards adolescent sexuality are rather conservative. They were not comfortable talking about issues of sexuality with adolescent patients. The nurses were aware of the importance of sexuality for an adolescent patient; however, they were not able to reflect this awareness in their practice.

The aim of this study is to draw the nurses' attention to adolescent sexuality and to review their attitudes towards sexuality. Hence, the nurses will be able to notice their difficulties related to sexual issues and cope with them. As a result, they will be able to give holistic care to their patients.