Eliminating gender insensitive medical practices

In continuation with CEHAT – DMER – MUHS collaboration to integrate gender in UG medical education, CEHAT has now embarked on a new project aimed to deepen gender in medical education by engaging with 4 semi urban and rural medical colleges to create gender equitable rural health services through concrete measures in medical education, training and clinical practices covering the entire spectrum of health services.

List of participant Medical colleges:

1. Shree Bhausaheb Hire Government Medical College, Dhule
2. Government Medical College, Akola
3. Government Medical College & Hospital, Aurangabad
4. Government Medical College and Hospital, Miraj
5. Dr Vaishampayan Memorial Govt Medical College, Solapur

The project is supported by Bajaj Auto Ltd. The core idea behind the project is to ensure that health services in public hospitals become sensitive to the health care needs of women and address women’s health concerns as an important step in achieving health equity.

The project specifically seeks to implement:

1. Training of medical educators to facilitate gender sensitive health services in MBBS curriculum across 5 core disciplines – gyanecology and obstetrics, forensic medicine, internal medicine, psychiatry and community medicine. The rationale for choosing these 5 disciplines is that they have the scope for building foundation of gender sensitive care amongst medical students.
2. Establishing clinical practice changes and implement specific protocols for prevention of labour room violence in 4 medical colleges.
3. Evolve protocols for implementation of gender sensitive clinical practice in the discipline of psychiatry, forensic science, medicine and gyanecology departments (family planning, attempted suicides, virginity testing removal, finger test removal amongst others)

Proposed Output of the project:

• Availability of Gender sensitive medical faculty to train medical faculty of other states
• Lesson plans integrated by medical educators to indicate how Gender will be taught to MBBS students in existing curriculum
• Documentation of select sessions of medical faculty related to gender and sexuality integration while teaching MBBS students across five disciplines
• Results of the implementation of gender sensitive checklists in 5 disciplines

Virtual Meeting with Stakeholders:

The project started on 15^th March 2021. Given the grim covid situation, first meeting with stake holders of emdical colleges was held on 24^th March 2021 on Zoom virtual platform. It was attended by 23 participants, such as HODs, Professors, Associate Professors from departments of Gyanecology and Obstetrics, Forensic Medicine, Internal Medicine, Psychiatry and Community Medicine from 4 Medical colleges.