The Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences includes training in gender diversity in the bachelor’s degree in Medicine
During the second semester of the academic year 2020/2021, the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences of the UB will offer for the first time the optional subject Training in Gender Diversity: TRANS People*. This subject, which will be taught online due to the pandemic-derived conditions, has been designed by Pepita Giménez Bonafé and will treat gender diversity in the health field.
During the second semester of the academic year 2020/2021, the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences of the UB will offer for the first time the optional subject Training in Gender Diversity: TRANS People*. This subject, which will be taught online due to the pandemic-derived conditions, has been designed by Pepita Giménez Bonafé and will treat gender diversity in the health field.
Lecturer at the Department of Physiological Sciences in the Bellvitge Campus of the UB, Giménez Bonafé is a precursor in the creation of the pioneering and innovative training offer in specific knowledge fields. An example is the creation of the subject on Maternal Breastfeeding, also offered in the bachelorʼs degree in Medicine. None of these subjects had been treated covered before in teaching for the students of Medicine and Health Sciences.
With two ECTS, this is a pioneer subject in Spain. Like Giménez Bonafé notes, “for the first time, a subject is focused on gender diversity to train future health professionals with a biopsychological and social perspective that will enable them to provide the right care to people who do not identify with the gender they were given when born, and who require a certain healthcare service”.
The main objective of this optional subject is to train the future health professionals within the reality of the existing gender diversity of nowadays, to offer a proper assistance to the health needs of trans people. “This trans reality -she says- includes transgender, transexual, non-binary, fluid and transvestite people, among others. A wide range of people that require special care which is not currently offered by the healthcare centres, be it due to a lack of knowledge or training of the health staff”. The subject wants to provide a current view of trans people from multiple aspects: legal, psychological, physiological, medical and social. Also, it proposes to avoid or reduce situations of transphobia or discrimination against within the health environment.
Over the course, students can attend masterclasses and interventions by entities in the trans field, such as the members of the service Trànsit, from the Catalan Health Service, and the associations Generem, EnFemme and Chrysallis, the latter dedicated to the accompaniment of trans underaged people. Among the participants in the subject are guides such as Sofía Bngoetxea and Judith Juanhuix, who, apart from sharing personal experiences, will provide a broad knowledge that will help the students to better know the current situation of gender diversity in the health field.