[INTEGRATING SEX AND GENDER DIFFERENCES/GENDER MEDICINE INTO THE FACULTY OF MEDICINE CURRICULUM]

Abstract

In recent decades, the recognition of the importance of sex, gender and their interrelationship for health research and for the practice of medicine has grown. Accordingly, the move to include gender medicine in medical school curricula has gained momentum in many countries. This article reviews the challenges of integrating this subject into medical school curricula and details the recent initiative to mainstream gender medicine into the six-year curriculum of the Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical School in Jerusalem, Israel. The program is spiral, i.e. in the first year a theoretical foundation is laid, which is later expanded and supplemented by practical knowledge in order to consolidate the knowledge acquired in the previous phases. The second principle is "from the general to the particular". This means moving from understanding what is already known in the previously published studies to applying it in the cases that the students will face during their clinical studies and examining how the knowledge and its application can be incorporated in the students' professional behavior as future physicians.