The women's health specialty: curriculum implications

Weaving women's health across clinical clerkships

Clerkship directors have an opportunity to develop consensus on learning objectives for women's health issues and to develop curricula that cross disciplinary boundaries. A collaborative interdisciplinary approach assures proper sequencing of knowledge and skill acquisition, conserves educational resources, and reflects the values of connectedness and patient-centeredness that are central to women's health. The informal networks and the institutional structures that bring clerkship directors together for discussion of a variety of educational issues promote such collaboration. The authors describe three approaches to designing and implementing women's health curricula and discuss how each might be applied to the topic of domestic violence: adding free-standing courses to existing curricula, often as electives; delegating pieces of the women's health curriculum to existing courses; and creating new interdisciplinary curricula that then are integrated into the general curriculum. Each has advantages and disadvantages. Ideally, models for curriculum design will reflect the collaborative patient-centered models upon which the field of women's health is based. Such models enhance program effectiveness by taking advantage of discipline-based expertise while allowing for the sharing of both educational responsibilities and educational resources.

A feminist model for women's health care

A feminist model of practice is grounded in feminist theories that are applicable to the health and health care of women. The goal of this model is to change how health care is delivered to individual women, but also to seek social transformation. Four major themes recur in this model: symmetry in provider-patient relationships, access to information, shared decision-making, and social change. This article describes ways in which clinicians can integrate these themes into practice. Suggestions for maintaining symmetry in the traditional power relationship include decreasing physical, social and personal barriers and attentive listening to patients' stories. Access to information involves creating an atmosphere that is conducive to teaching and learning, but also helping patients access other sources of information. Shared decision-making is central to feminist practice and is attainable when patients have been empowered and are knowledgeable about their healthcare needs. Social change entails the ever vigilant clinician who is familiar with the latest literature, both professional and lay, in order to critically analyse research studies, our colleagues' interpretations of those studies and how recommendations for practice are reached. Collectively, clinicians work with the public to strive for change within the healthcare system and society as a whole.