INTEGRATING GENDER IN MEDICAL EDUCATION: SECOND TRAINING OF TRAINERS COURSE

10TH – 14TH FEBRUARY, 2015, WEST END HOTEL, MARINE LINES, MUMBAI

The second training of trainers’ programme of the GME project was conducted from 10th to 14th February, 2015, in Mumbai. It was attended by 20 medical teachers from seven participating medical colleges in Maharashtra. This was the last phase of the training of trainers’ course of the project for participants who had earlier attended the first phase of training in 2015. All five selected departments, viz. Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Preventive and Social Medicine,

Forensic Medicine and Toxicology, Psychiatry and General Medicine, were represented in the training. The training included three days of facilitated sessions along with a day and a half spent on developing gender-sensitive modules for five subjects based on the undergraduate medical curriculum. The first day of training started with a session on “Understanding Concepts”facilitated by Dr. Manisha Gupte. This session involved revision of concepts learnt in the first phase of training such as Gender, Patriarchy, Intersectionality, Population Control and Family Planning and examining their impact on women’s reproductive health rights and autonomy. In the second half of the day, Dr. Gupte and Dr. Suchitra Dalvie facilitated the session on “Abortion and Sex Selection”. By use of case studies and discussions, this session aimed at bringing about clarity on access to abortion as an issue of women’s sexual and reproductive rights. It also placed gender-biased sex selection within the larger context of discrimination against women in society.

The next two days involved greater participant-involvement in the form of small group-work in discipline-wise groups. On the second day, Renu Khanna facilitated the session on “Understanding role of gender and rights in health care settings: the case of family planning services”. Participants were divided in groups and given case studies based on family-planning services, which they had to respond to from the rights perspective. In the afternoon, there was a panel discussion on “Mainstreaming Gender in Undergraduate Medical Education”. The panellists included Dr. Kamaxi Bhate, Dr. Padmaja Samant and Dr. Rajani Jagtap. Renu Khanna moderated the discussion. The panellists spoke of their experience as medical educators and clinicians in bringing in a gender perspective in their teaching and practice. The last session of the day, “Planning for gender-sensitive and client-centred health services”, facilitated by Dr. Sundari Ravindran, involved participants working in department-wise groups to develop checklists for addressing a given situation in clinical practice.

On the third day of training, participants presented the previous day’s group work which was followed by discussion in the larger group. It was proposed that the output of the session could be worked upon to be developed a training resource tool. The next session of the day was on “Mainstreaming gender in undergraduate medical teaching and learning” facilitated by Dr. Sundari Ravindran. In this session, Dr. Sundari presented various international experiences of similar initiatives to introduce a gender perspective in medical education. This was followed by group-work in department-wise groups in which participants were given a topic from each subject, for the teaching of which they had to prepare a list of learning objectives, methods and modes of evaluation, so as to integrate a gender perspective in the teaching and learning of that topic. The output presented by participants in this session also is to be developed as a resource tool for training. Following the sessions, the group proceeded to visit the Dilaasa crisis counselling centre at K.B. Bhabha Hospital, Bandra, in the evening. They were introduced to the counselling team who briefed them on the working of the centre and addressed their questions.

On the fourth and fifth days of training, participants worked with mentors to develop gender-sensitive modules for teaching of undergraduate medical students. The project mentors are senior medical faculty with expertise in the field of gender and its interface with health.

Preventive and Social Medicine

Obstetrics and Gynaecology

Medicine

Forensic Medicine and Toxicology

Psychiatry

Each subject group was given shortlisted topics from the MBBS curriculum of MUHS into which issues pertaining to gender could be added, along with suggested methodology, which was finalized previously by mentors. For a day and a half, the groups discussed the suggestions with their mentors and prepared a final output which included a list of topics, correlating gender modules and methods to be used, along with a tentative teaching plan. They presented their outputs on the last day, and received feedback from the discussants including Dr. Sundari Ravindran, Dr. Surinder Jaswal and Dr. Seema Malik, as also from other mentors. The modules prepared in these sessions will be finalized for introduction into MBBS teaching in the participating colleges of the project.

The presentations were followed by a concluding summary presented by Dr. Sundari, and a planning session for further activities in the project, which include conducting a baseline survey of MBBS students, introducing the gender sensitive modules in teaching, and conducting training workshops for medical teachers in participating colleges as well as other MBBS colleges in the districts.

This was followed by the valedictory session in which the participants received certificates at the hands of Dr. Seema Malik, which marked the conclusion of the training of trainers phase of the project. Later in the afternoon, there was a short presentation and discussion on using the project website by Rituparna Datta from IRIS Knowledge Foundation. Participants raised questions and also gave suggestions on developing forums within the website for better planning of activities and sharing of resources. These suggestions would be incorporated in further development of the website. All key resources given to participants would be made available on the website for wider dissemination.

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