SUPPORTING SEXUAL FUNCTIONING AND SATISFACTION DURING REHABILITATION AFTER SPINAL CORD INJURY: BARRIERS AND FACILITATORS IDENTIFIED BY HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONALS

Objective: To explore healthcare professionals' per-spectives on the barriers and facilitators impacting provision of support for sexual functioning/satis-faction during spinal cord injury rehabilitation. Design: Qualitative, semi-structured interview design. Methods: Sixteen healthcare professionals working in spinal cord injury rehabilitation settings were re-cruited (14 females, 2 males). Semi-structured in-terviews were conducted using a 9-item interview guide. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and inductively analysed following Braun and Clarke's (2006) 6 phases of thematic analysis. Results: Five inductive themes were generated de-scribing healthcare professional-perceived barriers and facilitators impacting upon care delivery post -spinal cord injury: (1) Integrating sexual wellbeing in rehabilitation; (2) Sex-informed multi-discipli-nary teams; (3) Acknowledging awkwardness; (4) Enhancing approachability; and (5) Recognizing the partner. Conclusion: Sexual functioning and satisfaction are priority areas for rehabilitation, yet they are persis-tently side-lined in multi-disciplinary team (MDT) rehabilitation agendas. Healthcare professionals do not feel supported to engage with their patients to improve and manage sexual functioning/satis-faction. Ensuring that healthcare professionals are equipped and made aware of sexuality-specific gui-delines and operational frameworks, which can be easily interpreted, structured and implemented as a standard part of spinal cord injury rehabilitation is key. This would be instrumental in enabling healt-hcare professionals to be more informed and com-fortable in creating an atmosphere in which sexual topics can be openly discussed to support individu-als with spinal cord injury.