Swedish Scholar

Swedish scholar, Sven Grützmeier, MD, studies at PHS

Sven Grützmeier, MD, a resident of Stockholm, Sweden, recently completed the  human sexuality course offered to medical students at the University of Minnesota Medical School. He intends to replicate the course for medical students at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.

 As a clinician, researcher, and the president of an association for gay physicians, Grützmeier has found that medical schools in Sweden do not provide an adequate sexual health education. The Swedish Association for Gay and Lesbian Physicians and Dentists works to maximize the quality of health and health services for lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals, and to promote civil rights for GLBT health care professionals. “Our country is open-minded about sex, but sexology education is not focused,” says Grützmeier. By instructing future physicians about the spectrum of human sexuality, Grützmeier hopes to change the way that doctors approach their patients. “The whole of the health care system here is built on the presumption that everyone is heterosexual. All the questionnaires, everything we think about when we research the patient, and all the questions we ask, are based on an assumption of heterosexuality. Simple questions that can highlight or elicit information about whether the client is homosexual, bisexual, or transsexual are not asked. There is no education in that area, and so people feel embarrassed about it and don't bother,” says Grützmeier. With an expanded understanding of sexuality, physicians will be better prepared to address their patients’ overall health. Grützmeier’s goal is to impact the entire health care system.

After four weeks of intensive training, Grützmeier returned to Stockholm, where he is a specialist in internal medicine, hematology, infectious diseases, and clinical chemistry. He works as a senior consultant at the Gay Men’s Health Clinic. In his research at the Department of Microbiology, Tumor, and Cell Biology at the Karolinska Institute, he is exploring the spectrum of diseases that Cytomegalovirus (CMV) causes in patients with HIV as compared to CMV infection in leukemia and post-transplant patients.