Women's Health Care Competencies for Medical Students
 APGO

Why Develop Women's Health Care Competencies for Medical Students?
Email:
Password:
Forgot it?
Active Curriculum has
0 Learning Objectives
Charged with improving women's health care education using an interdisciplinary approach, WHEO held the APGO Interdisciplinary Women's Health Education Retreat, "Undergraduate Medical Education in Women's Health: Today and Tomorrow," in November 2000 in Chantilly, VA. During the retreat, multidisciplinary attendees worked to identify key knowledge and skills (competencies) pertaining to sex and gender differences in women's health and disease.

Using the information developed at the 2000 retreat, a newly formed Multidisciplinary Women's Health Education Task Force designed the Women's Health Care Competencies for Medical Students1 booklet with the eight competencies, including potential topics for instruction. The document's purpose was to address curricular gaps and redundancies in the current medical school curriculum, and to provide the minimal standard to ensure that medical students, regardless of their future specialty, graduate with the knowledge and skill to competently care for women.

Following this publication, two working groups - the APGO Undergraduate Medical Education Committee (UMEC) and the National Centers of Excellence in Women's Health Professional Education Working Group (NCoE PEWG) - were charged with developing a set of learning objectives for an assigned competency. The resultant tables were intended to serve as a model to guide medical schools and they adapt the competencies to suit their own programs. Each table included learning objectives, the levels of professional competency described by GE Miller and the ACGME Outcome Project Toolbox of Assessment Methods. In addition, the groups linked each objective to the ACGME core competencies, and identified reference materials for medical students and teachers (more on how to use this table is found under "How to Use this Resource"). Their work is included in the document Women's Health Care Competencies: Sample Learning Objectives for Undergraduate Medical Education.2

A supplement issue to the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology (AJOG), titled "Implementing Women's Health Competencies into Undergraduate Medical Education School Curriculum," and dedicated to the outcomes of the APGO Women's Health Education Retreat 2000, was released in September 2002.

The success of these efforts led to another interdisciplinary retreat in 2003. "The Future of Women's Health: Performance-based Tools for Today's Medical Schools," was held June 13-15, 2003, again in Chantilly, VA. At the retreat, 64 health science educators from 14 specialties and numerous subspecialties gathered to work in small groups. Using the APGO UMEC and NCoE PEWG model, each group wrote sets of learning objectives, as well as identified evaluation methods, Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) competencies and references for each objective for the remaining competencies. Their work, along with the updated learning objectives from Women's Health Care Competencies: Sample Learning Objectives for Undergraduate Medical Education, are included in Women's Health Care Competencies for Medical Students: Taking Steps to Include Sex and Gender Differences in the Curriculum.
1 Cain J, Donoghue G, Magrane D, Rusch R, Silver E, editors. Women's health care competencies for medical students, editors. Washington, DC: Association of Professors of Gynecology and Obstetrics, 2001.
2 Cain J, Donoghue G, Magrane D, Rusch R, Silver E, editors. Women's health care competencies: sample learning objectives for undergraduate medical education. Crofton, MD: Association of Professors of Gynecology and Obstetrics, 2002.