Sexuality — The Experience and Anxieties of Medical Students

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Abstract
In a study of the medical student's sexuality as it relates to his total medical-school experience, 397 male medical students at the University of Pennsylvania were found to be more experienced sexually than college-educated men studied by Kinsey. Nevertheless, the average student has strong desires for sex education both for his personal edification and to equip him to counsel patients. An important component of the anxiety that he experiences in physician-patient relations is due to sexual conflict. However, his personal sex experience or sense of confidence is not related to his propensity to these sexual conflicts and anxieties. There is strong evidence that his anxieties appreciably inhibit professional objectivity. These anxieties were more marked during the earlier than the later years of medical-school experience. The student's sexuality fits into a constellation of emotional factors that determines the integrated quality of his personality, and it is this overall quality that facilitates or inhibits optimal physician-patient interactions and communication.

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