Creating user personas

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Based on our review of the literature, even though sexual health is viewed as important by both physicians and patients, communication on this topic remains relatively low. Patients generally report high interest in discussing their sexual health. However, physicians continue to report hesitation in initiating conversations about sexual health, with some even likening it to “opening a can of worms”. One of the obstacles to initiating sexuality discussions is the physician’s discomfort with the topic, which is rarely addressed in medical education.

Our workshop was targeted at medical students in Malaysia, where sexuality is not openly discussed and sexuality education is not required in schools or the medical school curriculum. While there is some homogeneity in overall (conservative) attitudes and behaviors related to sexuality and sexual health among young Malaysians, it was important to consider the different needs, motivations, and pain points of medical school students at different years in our recruitment strategy and design of the workshop.

Given the limited time and resources we had available, we relied on the “proto persona” method. I organized a workshop with my collaborators, who were seasoned medical educators and practitioners, and with research assistants, who knew at least one student from the medical undergraduate program. Our goal was to identify the ideal users of our sexual health workshop. 

From our discussion, we identified some key things to consider:

• Differences in medical knowledge 
• Differences in clinical experience (years 1-3 lack clinical exposure)
• Differences in educational needs
• Differences in campus size (years 1-3 were run at the main campus while years 4-5 were run at a smaller campus)
• Differences in availability due to class schedules
• Differences in socialization and sense of belonging due to the COVID-19 pandemic (years 1 and 2 began their program during the nationwide lockdown)

From these insights, I brought the personas to life and shared them with my team for reference in our design of the workshop and participant recruitment strategies.