Published 2024-03-28
Keywords
- gender medicine,
- teaching methodology,
- family medicine training
Abstract
The certainties gained in 30 years of research on sex and gender diversity do not yet belong to daily clinical practice, despite legislative efforts (law 3/2018 and application plan of June 2019). The androcentric orientation of the texts used over the years of study has influenced a non-inclusive medical vision of gender differences in the same diseases.
The awareness of these difficulties led to the proposal already in July 2021, anticipating the training plan for gender medicine of 04/11/23 (which provides training courses on gender differences for all subjects in post-graduate training , as well as for the first and second level masters) a three-year seminar course to train students on the important differences in the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of the same pathologies in males and females.
Methods:
4 hours of seminars were provided per year of the course, part in distance learning, part in person; lectures (max 20 minutes) alternated with multimedia classroom surveys and discussions of didactic and real clinical cases.
Results
They have been trained
• 608 1st year students, on the history, meaning and evolution of gender-specific medicine, hints on the differences in cardiology and gender pharmacology and gender medicine applied to the male gender, preparatory to the subsequent seminars. They were asked to choose the topics to explore in depth the following year
• 371 of the 2nd year, on psychiatry, cardiovascular, oncology but also pharmacology (no perceived training need)
• 219 of the 3rd year (complete path): on violence (clinical manifestations, medical-legal aspects and solutions) and on gender differences in Long Covid
Conclusions
The use of multimedia teaching tools alternating with frontal lessons, with real-time processing of the contributions, proved fundamental in stimulating participation. Positive feedback denoted interest in a perspective NEVER addressed before during the course of study. The effectiveness of the training will be evaluated by a multidisciplinary medical-psychological team