Healthier Scotland. Scottish Government

GP’s can offer a full range of sexual health services. We can do it all. We can see you for your contraception and that’s not just about prescribing pills that’s about all the types of contraception there are. We can give you advice on how to maintain good sexual health, what the dos and don’ts are. We can test you for sexually transmitted diseases or tell you how to avoid getting them. We will test for things like HIV in general practice and we offer a confidential service that can deal with any of your sexual health problems.

I think more people are willing to come and see their GP about sexual health problems, I think they realise that we do provide a confidential service, I think that one of the advantages is that if you are sitting in our waiting room, you could be there for anything, no one knows that you’re there for a sexual health issue. So no one knows that you are there for a sexual health issue, so we can offer a very anonymous service as well and I think people are using our service more and we’re trying to make it more friendly for people to come, we have posters in the waiting room to show that we do help with sexual health problems, we can offer that service.

GP’s offer a confidential service, people don’t always appreciate that, we offer a totally confidential service, what you discuss with me in the surgery, won’t go any further. There are very few exceptions to that. If you tell me something that might affect someone else or be dangerous to someone else, then in those extreme circumstances I do have to break confidentiality, but that’s really rare and that would be the same as anywhere you went. But for sexual health services, GP’s offer a totally confidential service and what goes on between us won’t go any further.

I don’t think that people should worry about being judged by their doctors, we’re there as a professional service, we’ve all been trained to offer that and we see all types on people coming through our door, it’s not our business to judge people, we’re there to provide you with what you need and we should offer you a confidential, non-judgemental service and I think you can expect that in general practice.