Integration of women's health into an internal medicine core curriculum for medical students.
The authors describe their year-long collaboration to analyze and integrate the elements of women's health into their medical school's core curriculum in internal medicine for the third-year clerkship. Such a process was necessary because the current curriculum was inadequate in its treatment of women's health (e.g., little or no coverage of issues pertaining to women in teaching about certain disorders; lack of female subjects in many research studies; study designs' using standards derived from manifestations of diseases in men; the cross-discipline aspects of women's health). The authors illustrate the new curriculum by discussing the revised module in pulmonary medicine; they detail the steps they took to uncover problems and omissions in the existing curriculum and in the literature on the topic, and how they remedied these. (For example, in a case involving a man with pulmonary embolus, one of the new questions for students is "What questions would you ask if this patient were a woman?") They comment on the challenges they faced in revising the curriculum, including lack of protected time, lack of sufficient data about women's health, inherent sex and gender bias in the literature and educational materials, need to make students aware of the importance of sex and gender considerations in patient care, and the ingrained bias of faculty, including the authors. Their process can be adapted and used to integrate curricula in other emerging interdisciplinary fields, such as cross-cultural medicine and gay and lesbian health. The authors conclude that collaboration between students and faculty, as illustrated in their own efforts, is one way to ensure that future practitioners are optimally trained to treat patients in the ever-changing field of medicine.
Nicolette
J
J
University of California, Davis, Davis, California, USA.
Jacobs
M B
MB
D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D017714:Community-Acquired Infections / Q000175:diagnosis; D003428:Cross Infection / Q000175:diagnosis; D003479:Curriculum; D004504:Education, Medical, Undergraduate; D005180:Faculty, Medical; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007388:Internal Medicine / Q000193:education*; D008171:Lung Diseases / Q000175:diagnosis; D008173:Lung Diseases, Obstructive / Q000175:diagnosis; D008297:Male; D018579:Patient Selection; D011014:Pneumonia / Q000175:diagnosis; D011287:Prejudice; D011655:Pulmonary Embolism / Q000175:diagnosis; D012737:Sex Factors; D013337:Students, Medical; D013663:Teaching / Q000379:methods; D013664:Teaching Materials; D016387:Women's Health