Education of counseling has improved sexual dialogue and clinical skills of midwives with postmenopausal women: a randomized single blind clinical trial

The high prevalence of sexual problems in menopausal women is partly due to the insufficient skills, knowledge and wrong attitudes of health care providers about sexual issues. This study aims to determine the effect of education of sexual counseling with the PLISSIT (Permission, Limited Information, Specific Suggestions, Intensive Therapy) model on clinical skills and midwives’ dialogue about sex with postmenopausal women. This is a randomized single blind clinical trial with a pretest-posttest design and control group. 232 midwives who met the inclusion criteria were selected randomly from among the members of the Kerman medical council, Kerman, Iran. Participants randomly divided into two groups. After completing the clinical skills and sexual dialogue questionnaire, the participants in the intervention group received two sex counseling sessions based on the PLISSIT model. The duration of each session was five hours. At the end of the last session, the questionnaires were completed by the two groups again. Collected data were analyzed by SPSS22. Participants in the intervention and control groups were homogeneous in terms of demographic variables. Moreover, the two groups were not significantly different in terms of clinical skills and sexual dialogue before the intervention. After the intervention, the mean score of clinical skills (154.33 ± 11.21 VS 129.68 ± 10.44s) and sexual dialogue (161.03 ± 7.46 VS 144.36 ± 4.88) was significantly in the intervention group higher than in the control group ( p > 0.0001). This counselling can be used as an effective intervention to promote clinical skills and sexual dialogue of midwives with postmenopausal women, and it can lead to improving the quality of life of postmenopausal women. This is a randomized controlled clinical trial approved by the Ethics Committee of Kerman University of Medical Sciences (code of ethics IR.KMU.REC.1398.681and also clinical trial code IRCT20170624034722N2), first trial registration was 24.12.2023.