Nurses' facilitators and barriers for taking a sexual history in Taiwan

The purpose of this study was to explore factors that Taiwanese nurses perceive as facilitators or barriers for taking a sexual history. These nurses (N = 391) perceived the two major facilitators to be the desire of a nurse to know whether or not a patient's sexual history was related to his/her illness and when a patient specifically mentioned a sexual problem. The major two perceived barriers were patients feeling either embarrassed about the issues of sexuality or that their sexuality was unrelated to their treatment and a lack of professionals for referral of patients for further consultations. Enhancing Taiwanese nurses' perceived facilitators and decreasing their perceived barriers to sexual history taking should be an essential goal for nursing.