Nursing student Jojanneke Wolthof from Groningen has won the Anner Award, a competition for student entrepreneurs in the Northern Netherlands, with her plan for a company that offers patients sex care.
The 20-year-old third-year student of Hanze University of Applied Sciences won both the jury and the public award on Thursday evening. She wants to establish a company, Endorphins, that enables intimacy for patients with a physical and / or mental disability. “I am here for a reason, it is 2021, we have to do something about this,” she said during the presentation. “I’m going to work hard to get this off the ground.”
A patient with a sex life? ‘There is still a taboo on it’
Wolthof said earlier in Dagblad van het Noorden : ,, During the internship you will be told: if a patient gets an erection, you just put a cold washcloth on it, while sex is a basic need, just like eating and sleeping, but we hardly go into this. There is still a taboo on it. ”
She came up with the company Endorphins – named after the happiness hormone – where social workers offer sex care. “For example, it could be someone with Down’s syndrome who wants to have the experience of a girlfriend. What is involved? You can talk about that. But it can also be someone who would like to experience sex. A young man who was completely paralyzed wanted to know if it all still worked. ”
‘You don’t ask your mother that’
But who is going to do that? “You don’t ask your mother that and a nurse is not allowed to. In addition, research has shown that abstaining from sex can lead to aggression and frustration that can lead to unacceptable behavior towards, for example, healthcare staff. I honestly wonder: so much is being done to improve healthcare, how can they forget this aspect? The unique thing about Endorphins is that sex care really becomes part of the care plan. It is also special that the initiative comes from the healthcare sector and I am talking to sex workers with a healthcare background. ”
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