Sexual Assault and Domestic and Family Violence medical student education

Professor Amanda Henry is the academic lead of the Sexual Assault and Domestic and Family Violence (SADFV) Curriculum Working Group (Faculty of Medicine and Health UNSW), a student-staff collaboration that updated the SADFV curriculum and teaching materials across all phases of the BMed MD program in 2021, including implementation of train-the-trainer staff sessions. Other WATTLE members of the working group include Dr Patricia Cullen, Dr Megan Kalucy, Dr Husna Razee and Prof Susan Rees. The curriculum changes mean SADFV-related topics have gone from receiving less than 5 hours of direct teaching/tutorials across the medical program to 20+ hours, with teaching and clinical skills sessions on history taking for sensitive topics starting from the first year of the BMed MD program.

Research into the implementation of the SADFV curriculum is ongoing:

• Student (now junior doctor) working group member Dylan Mayer presented at the Australian and New Zealand Association for Health Professional Educators on the work in 2022 “Tossing away the too hard basket - Faculty-Student Partnership in Advocacy, Design and Implementation of a Gendered Violence Curriculum in Medical School” https://anzahpe.org/ANZAHPE-Current-News/12886206, and
• Divyansh Sharma at ANZAHPE 2023 on “Medical student knowledge, understanding & self-perceived readiness to address intimate partner violence