Representation of women and women's health in Australian medical school course outlines, curriculum requirements and selected core clinical textbooks

Merone, Lea, Tsey, Komla, Russell, Darren, and Nagle, Cate (2024) Representation of women and women's health in Australian medical school course outlines, curriculum requirements and selected core clinical textbooks. Women's Health Reports, 5 (1).

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Abstract

Background: Historically, medical research has, outside of reproductive health, neglected the health needs of women. Medical studies have previously excluded female participants, meaning research data have been collected from males and generalized to females. Knowledge gained from research is translated to clinical education and patient care, and female exclusion may result in gaps in the medical school curricula and textbooks.

Materials and Methods: This study involved a desktop review of the Australian Medical Council Standards for assessment and accreditation of primary medical programs, the online publicly available Australian medical school course outlines, and finally, an analysis of the recommended textbooks.

Results: There is no fixed or explicit requirement to include women's health in Australian medical school curricula. Medical school course outlines do not adequately include women's health; similarly, clinical medicine textbooks do not account for sex and gender differences.

Conclusion: Important sex and gender differences in medicine are not reflected adequately in the medical school course outlines, curricula, or clinical textbooks. This may have significant consequences on women's health.

Item ID: 75461
Item Type: Article (Research - C1)
ISSN: 2688-4844
Copyright Information: © Lea Merone et al., 2024; Published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. This Open Access article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons License[CC-BY] (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Date Deposited: 01 Jul 2025 03:27
FoR Codes: 39 EDUCATION > 3901 Curriculum and pedagogy > 390110 Medicine, nursing and health curriculum and pedagogy @ 100%
SEO Codes: 16 EDUCATION AND TRAINING > 1603 Teaching and curriculum > 160301 Assessment, development and evaluation of curriculum @ 50%
20 HEALTH > 2005 Specific population health (excl. Indigenous health) > 200509 Women's and maternal health @ 50%
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