What is GUM clinic?

 If you’d never encountered the term GUM hospital before, you could be excused for thinking that it was a surgery where you’d go to find the services of a dental hygienist. But after you discover that the letters GUM stand for ( Genito-Urinary Medicine ), you can quickly realise that GUM hospitals are in truth sexual health clinics, and thus fulfil a slightly different role!

So what exactly does “genito-urinary medication ” mean? And what happens at a GUM clinic?

As its name advocates, genito-urinary medicine deals with the urinary system and the masculine and feminine sex organs. At a GUM hospital, medical pros will be able to test you for STIs and then prescribe acceptable treatment if you are unlucky enough to have contracted an infection.

 You may be tested for assorted UTIs ( urinary tract illnesses ), including the bladder infection known as cystitis and the urethra infection known as urethritis. As any cystitis victim will testify, this condition may cause extraordinary pain, so it is comforting to know that treatments are available to help deaden the condition’s upsetting symptoms, which include a unpleasant burning feeling experienced when urinating.

Thrush ( or “candida, ” to give it its correct medical name ) and other illnesses of the reproductive organs may also be diagnosed and treated at a GUM centre. All recommendation and treatment is administered free of charge, and info is always handled in absolute confidence. This means you can speak with GUM clinic staff candidly and brazenly, safe in the certainty that anything you tell them may not be passed on to any third parties.

Sexual health hospitals are frequently, although not always, located at a surgery or in a health centre. The range of sexual health services that these clinics provide is extensive. Services include HIV testing and counselling, contraception and contraception advice, testing and treatment for STIs, emergency contraception as well as contraception advice.

 If you’d like to find STI testing services in your local area, you can check online using your postcode. Alternatively, you might consult the phone book under Sexual Health. If, on the other hand, you’re troubled that you could attend a centre where somebody could recognize you, you can just as well be tested at a hospital that’s further afield, as GUM hospitals are located the length and breadth of the United Kingdom.

 

 

 

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