The sexual history taking workshop was organised with the aim of instructing clinical medical students in the method of taking a complete and accurate sexual history during their work at hospital.

The workshop comprised of a talk given by Dr. Viktor Cassar related to the skills and tools necessary to take a history. This talk focused on how one would go about asking sensitive questions to patients related to their sexual histories, situations that may arise whilst doing so and the moral grey areas that we as doctors must be aware of when handling such sensitive information.

The talk was then followed by a presentation given by Dr. Katya Muscat focusing on sexually transmitted infections, their incidence in the Maltese population and what constitutes a typical work day at the GU clinic. The presentation was then followed by a history taking exercise where all the participants were split up into smaller groups and tasked with taking a sexual history from their assigned helper which had been given a case study to act out. The helpers then rotated amongst the participant groups so that multiple histories were taken by each group.

The workshop was concluded with a brief description of the cases, a run-through of the medico-legal aspect of sexual history taking and some feedback which was given to the participants who took sexual histories from the helpers.