Improving students’ sexual history inquiry and HIV counseling with an interactive workshop using standardized patients

Sexual history and HIV counseling are essential clinical skills. Our project's purpose was to evaluate a standardized patient (SP) educational intervention teaching third-year medical students sexual history taking and HIV counseling. A 4-hour SP workshop was delivered to one-half of the class. Four weeks later, all students engaged in an SP examination including one station on assessing sexual history taking and HIV counseling. Workshop participants scored one standard deviation higher on sexual history and HIV counseling items than nonparticipants. Our sexual history and HIV counseling curriculum was associated with students asking more thorough sexual histories and providing more HIV counseling.