How to Treat Sexual Partners of Patients With STIs

Dr. Shafer: In some jurisdictions, there's support for testing partners and that from a privacy standpoint that there's really no issues. But in other jurisdictions, you don't have support for treating the partners directly so it's a little bit trickier. We need to counsel them about safe sex and the seven days of abstinence as well as understanding that all sexual partners within 60 days of the most recent should be referred for evaluation,. The other responsibility we have is to report things like syphilis and HIV to public health.