Development and initial Experience of an online Exchange Platform on Sex and Gender Aspects in Medicine: "GenderMed-Wiki".

Abstract

Goal: Knowledge about sex/gender aspects in medicine is often lacking, even though this serves as base for individualized patient-centered care. Thus we developed an online exchange platform on sex and gender aspects in medicine: “GenderMed-Wiki” [www.gendermed-wiki.de]. This was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF; FKZ: 01FP1506). Our goal is to facilitate the integration of sex and gender in all areas of medicine. Therefore we evaluated if "GenderMed-Wiki" is suitable to provide knowledge on sex and gender aspects in medicine adequately. Methods: Qualitative evaluation of “GenderMed-Wiki” was done 6 months after project start by 4 focus groups with a total of 30 participants (students, lecturers, physicians, and the public). The discussions in each focus group were minuted, requirements pooled and new categories derived inductively. After further optimization of the platform a quantitative survey was done by an online questionnaire (SoSci Survey). 149 students of the medical faculties of Muenster and Duisburg-Essen (as well as students of dentistry from the medical faculty of Muenster) participated (return rate of 3.3%). Evaluation of the content of the articles was done by assessing three professional articles: Sex/gender and medicine (both study courses medicine and dentistry), depression (medicine only) and periodontitis (dentistry only). The results were reported in relative and absolute frequencies and associations were assessed by Chi-Quadrat-tests. Results: Four categories which needed further optimization were deducted from the responses given by our focus groups prior to evaluation: aspects related to content, technical requirements, usability of the platform and legal challenges. Most of the students found “GenderMed-Wiki” to be informative, however they didn´t think it to be relevant for their current studies. In contrast, many thought that the platform may be useful when working as physicians. Students who reported that topics related to sex and gender were not of importance to them, evaluated the platform more neutrally and answered questions related to sex/gender in depression more often incorrectly.Conclusions: Focus groups are a useful approach to identify necessary changes in projects in a systematic way. After further optimizations, “GenderMed-Wiki” seems to be suitable to facilitate the integration of sex/gender into medical teachings. It is of importance, however, to change the attitude of students towards sex/gender sensitive medicine (e.g. by integration into the medical curriculum), since this influences strongly how this platform is perceived and how someone deals with its contents.