Medical professionals are facing a ‘constant battle’ to try and reduce the stigma around sexual health.
Earlier this month the new Manx Integrated Sexual Health Centre relocated to a new home on Kensington Road, in Douglas, to meet the ‘ever-growing’ demands on the service.
It's now described as a ‘one stop shop’ for contraception, testing and the management and treatment of all sexually transmitted infections including HIV.
Another media outlet on the Island was recently criticised for how it reported the move after initially choosing to use what some people saw as an inappropriate headline.
Lead Nurse Amanda Dawson spoke to Manx Radio about the new facility, the benefits for patients, and the impact of negative press.
The move went very well actually. It's been a lot of hard work. The staff have worked extremely hard to make sure that we moved from one place to another without too much trauma and without too much disruption to our services. We worked really hard in our old clinic before we opened our new clinic. The new clinic gives us more clinical rooms, which was one of the drivers for moving. So anybody who wants to get an appointment here knows that they might have to wait a few weeks for an appointment. We're hoping in the very near future that our new clinic rooms will address that. So more rooms means we can see more patient and we think it's a more convenient location for most people to get to with parking outside. So we're hoping it's going to be a much more accessible service. It might seem like an obvious question but why do we need a sexual health clinic on the island? What services do you carry out here and why is it important? I believe sexual health is really important. I've worked in sexual health for many years now and seen the service grow over the years. I think what we do is encourage people to come in and get testing. It's really important to get tested. In today's world people tend to change partners and we encourage people to get tested every time they change sexual partners because undiagnosed infections can have really disastrous consequences if not identified and treated effectively. So that's an important role. The other role that we play is contraception. So we provide a full contraception service here. Any method that anybody would require we can provide. And alongside that with the screening for STIs, doing the contraception we do opportunistic survival screening. That's part of your sexual health as well. People don't often consider that it's part of their sexual health but it is. And we look after people with HIV. We have patients that we care for long term. We also provide a service for genital skin conditions and for females, vulval pain disorders. We manage those as well. So lots of women may go to their GPs with unexplained skin problems or pain and they can come here and get a diagnosis and we can manage that as well. So we do a whole range of services here, not just STI testing. Just on those latter services you mentioned there, how important is it to get checked early? And you can, I suppose, diagnose some quite serious conditions here. We can. I mean probably one of the most serious in everybody's opinion would be HIV. Early detection is absolutely crucial because if it's detected in the early stages before you develop symptoms you can be managed long term and live a long healthy life as long as you take your medication and follow our advice. What can put people off coming to the clinic and be a bit hesitant about coming forward? I think the clinic for a long time has had stigma and we've worked so so hard to get rid of that stigma and encourage people to look after their sexual health. And it's not being helped by recent headlines. I was really encouraged by the public response to what may be considered completely irresponsible journalism. It really had such an impact on staff here. It would work so hard. It was really unfair. Because how long has this move been in development? We've been talking about it for many years and recommending that all our services should be joined together. That's because it provides a holistic service. It means people can get different services all in one appointment as opposed to go into different places. So the last I would say three years we've been planning to move. So that's when really when it was agreed yes you should move, you should all be together and it's taking three years to get where we are today. And it's important of course that people feel they can come forward without judgment. Is that a constant battle? It is a constant battle but one that we think we're winning. Obviously judging by the public response to the recent headlines and also by feedback from our patients, once they come in and they meet the staff and they get the service, we get such good feedback and they always say that was never as bad as I thought. We would always say to people never be scared to come in and get checked. And if we could do a little bit of myth busting or mish busting as it was put to me just before I left the station earlier, what are some common misconceptions about STIs? You would know if you had one. That's a common misconception and you wouldn't always know if you have one. So that is the reason that we're always saying get yourself checked out. Lots of infections can be silent and without a test, you wouldn't know that you've got the infection. So what would your message be now then to anyone who is perhaps a little bit concerned or like I say they've recently started seeing somebody new, what should they do? They should give us a call and make an appointment and come in and have a checkup. Another myth is that everybody gets examined and we do all kinds of dreadful things to people, we don't do dreadful things to people. Most people that come don't even be examined now, the testing is so sophisticated, you can take your own swabs or just produce a urine sample. And obviously a blood test for most people as well, you can't do that yourself, we would have to do that. But the embarrassing bit about you know perhaps getting your pants off in front of a stranger that doesn't happen to everybody. So we only do that if we have to. And obviously complete professionalism here. Absolutely, absolutely. The staff here, my team are absolutely fantastic, they're all so good at their jobs, making people feel at ease and they're not embarrassed to talk about sex and sexual health issues that is our expertise. Back when I was at school we would have nurses from the local clinic come and educate the sort of the higher year groups in secondary school, is that something you do as well? We do, when we're invited into schools, we will happily go in and talk about sexual health services and we would do age-appropriate sex education and education about STIs and getting checked and the need for contraception once they're considering being sexually active. So yeah that is something that we do, it's an important role. From what I understand a lot of the education was missed out during COVID years, some services and education had to be cut and we've been trying to address that. We've been back in schools this year actually trying to do a catch up on any of the children that have missed out and it is really important that they understand that their sexual health is important and I have to say recently I was at Balacameen school, big shout out to them, they were so grown up about it, more grown up than the journalist I would have to say. Thank you for making it to the end of the Manxeradian Newscast. You are obviously someone with exquisite taste. May I politely suggest you might want to subscribe to this and a wide range of Manxeradia podcasts at your favourite podcast provider, so our best bits will magically appear on your smartphone. Thank you. [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]
