Abstract
The purpose of this study is to compare the change in general practitioner (GP) trainees’ gender awareness following a modular gender medicine programme or a mainstream gender medicine programme. In 2007, a prospective study was conducted in three cohorts of in total 207 GP trainees who entered GP training in the Netherlands. The outcome measure was the Nijmegen Gender Awareness in Medicine Scale and a 16-item gender knowledge questionnaire. Two gender medicine teaching methods were compared: a modular approach (n = 75) versus a mainstream approach (n = 72). Both strategies were compared with a control cohort (n = 60). Statistical analysis included analysis of variance and t-tests. The overall response rates for the modular, mainstream and control cohort were 78, 72 and 82 %, respectively. There was a significant difference in change in gender knowledge scores between the modular cohort compared with the mainstream and control cohort (p = 0.049). There were no statistical differences between the cohorts on gender sensitivity and gender role ideology. At entry and end, female GP trainees demonstrated significantly higher gender awareness than male GP trainees. A modular teaching method is not a more favourable educational method to teach gender medicine in GP training. Female GP trainees are more gender aware, but male GP trainees are not unaware of gender-related issues.
Highlights
Appropriate teaching of general practitioners (GPs) is crucial to improve the delivery of gender-specific primary care [1]
The purpose of this study is to compare the change in general practitioner (GP) trainees’ gender awareness following a modular gender medicine programme or a mainstream gender medicine programme
A key person at each institute held a list with the identification numbers and assured that both the pre- and post-test were completed by the same GP trainee
Summary
Appropriate teaching of general practitioners (GPs) is crucial to improve the delivery of gender-specific primary care [1]. Gender medicine education is nowadays recommended as an integral part of primary care and postgraduate training [1, 2]. Gender medicine education involves the implementation of education about sex- and gender-related processes, reactions and treatments in health care [3]. Various consensus statements in medical curricula and communication include gender and lay emphasis on training and awareness of gender in health [4, 5]. Doctors are frequently confronted with gender-specific health problems and it is for these reasons that medical schools increasingly take initiatives to provide doctors with appropriate educational curricula on gender medicine [6,7,8,9,10]
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