RFSU Clinic

The RFSU Clinic is the largest youth clinic in Sweden. It is also one of the few places in Sweden where people with problems related to sexuality can seek advise and therapy. Further more it is a nursery for new methods in working with SRHR-related issues.

The RFSU Clinic is located in central Stockholm, together with the RFSU headquarters. The Clinic is an organizational unit in its own right, and is open throughout the year, both during day time and evenings. The Clinic has both permanent staff as well as consultants. The staff consists of a senior physician, midwifes, nurses, secretaries and psychotherapists. The consultants are health professionals who work on an hourly basis. All the consultants have other work within Stockholm County Council’s health care system. In this way the Clinic benefits from its consultants’ experiences in public health care, while RFSU’s approaches to sexual issues are spread to other parts of the community. The Clinic’s manegemant works together with RFSU’s secretariat. The focus of clinical activitites, however, is determined within the Clinic. This focus changes constantly in response to the shifting needs of the community. The RFSU Clinic has always been a pioneer in the sexual arena. When responsibility for its pioneering activities are taken over by public health services, new projects are embarked upon by the Clinic.

Three branches of activities

The Clinic has three orientations:

• Contraception counselling and STI (Sexually Transmitted Infections) prevention.
• Sexual counselling and psychotherapy.
• Outreach and education.

A considerable amount of work is conducted as programmes. This applies to both treatment and education. Initiatives often come from members of the staff, who detect emerging needs among the people they are advising. If, for example, a specialized clinic is set out for men and women who have been subjected to sexual assault, experiences from the clinic are transformed into educational packages or courses for health care personnel who encounter this group of patients. The programmes are evaluated and documented in articles, pamphlets and books, sometimes in several languages. The Clinic is involved in some of the RFSU’s international programmes, which are partly financed by IPPF (International Planned Parenthood Federation) and Sida (Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency).

Examples of programmes

The sexual-medical section of the Clinic works in close collaboration with its sexual-counselling/psychotherapeutic counterpart. Many programmes are performed jointly. A typical example of a collaborative programme is one aimed at helping women who do not dare to undergo a gynaecological examination or who seek help for pain during sexual intercourse. The method employed involves a combination of medical examination, treatment and counselling. A second programme is designed to give people with physical or learning disabilities access to contraception and sexual counselling. This project has generated an interest in further training among various groups of caring professionals. A third programme is being conducted in collaboration with the social services and the police. It is concerned with the physical examinations of young girls prior to the investigation of sexual assaults. The RFSU Clinic is regarded as offering a friendlier environment than a hospital or institution of forensic medicine. A further programme, which has been running for several years, is to spread knowledge of emergency contraception or the “morning-after pill”, and on how it should be used.

International work/courses

The Clinic has provided courses in i.e. several African countries and China in collaboration with local family planning organizations. Participation in training conferences takes place on a regular basis in various European countries, e.g. Russia, Finland, France and Estonia.