Women's Health Care Competencies for Medical Students
 APGO

Importance to Medical Education
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The Institute of Medicine (IOM) has clearly stated that "sex and gender matter" in understanding the science and delivery of health care.1 The APGO WHEO and its interdisciplinary colleagues in women's health education recognized this fact when developing women's health competencies for medical student education. These Competencies were developed to address the need for models of well-designed interdisciplinary curricula that focus on the differences of sex and gender across the basic, clinical and social sciences that provide the foundations of good medicine. Medical students must know the basic differences in sex and gender in health and disease by the time they graduate from medical school.

Our ultimate goal is to optimize women's health care by teaching medical students how to recognize and address sex and gender-based differences as they relate to the health of individuals and of populations. We began this process by identifying a set of women's health care competencies and developing a comprehensive set of learning objectives based upon them. We believe the next logical step is the development and implementation of interdisciplinary curricula showcasing this material.

The learning objectives found in this resource are designed to enable faculty at the nation's medical schools to address conditions that are more common or present differently in women in a comprehensive and integrated fashion. The deliberate attention paid to cultural and socioeconomic concerns throughout the document transcends traditional medical education recognizing that variables, including age, culture, ethnicity, and sexual orientation also impact health and illness in critical ways. We hope that the impact of each of these, and other variables that we may not have considered, will be remembered by the educators who use these learning competencies.

As the experts developed the learning objectives and as the APGO Multidisciplinary Women's Health Education Task Force edited the competencies tables, three important factors were considered:
  1. health and illness are sex and gender specific in causation, response, and systems;
  2. the historical focus on sex and gender "neutral" research and care contributed to disparities, especially among women; and
  3. contemporary models of education are increasingly interdisciplinary with assessment of competency based upon observable outcomes.
This resource focuses on medical student education but assists at all levels of professional education. This philosophy underlies the process, learning objectives, and competency-based approach employed throughout the APGO Women's Health Care Competencies project. As this project moves forward, APGO remains committed to the idea that by identifying and addressing gender inequalities throughout medical school curricula today, we will substantively improve women's health in the future tomorrow. At baseline, APGO's learning objectives will help medical school faculties enhance teaching in traditional biomedical content areas such as anatomy and physiology. This, however, is only the beginning. Alongside such materials, educators will find tools that will help them teach and assess patient-clinician communication, physical exam and counseling skills.

Thus, this resource brings to medical educators contemporary approaches in education with up to date knowledge of clinical practice and science. Teaching and assessing competency in women's health is, therefore, a critical step for changing the patterns of care practiced by tomorrow's physicians.

Readers should understand that the purpose of these competencies is to identify those areas of medicine where, as of 2004, significant issues have been identified that are important to the appropriate health care and prevention of illness in women. It is not our intent to identify all issues, only those that exhibit known sex and/or gender differences, or have important health implications for women.

The reader should also recognize that in this field of lively, ongoing research, additional significant issues are being identified daily. While the issues and topics are changing, the competencies are essential and enduring.
1 Institute of Medicine (U.S.); Committee on Understanding the Biology of Sex and Gender Differences. Exploring the biological contributions to human health: does sex matter? Wizemann TM, Pardue ML, editors. Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2001.