Integrating concerns of gender, sexuality and marital status in the medical curriculum

The introduction of AETCOM (attitude, ethics and communication) (1) is seen as an effort at incorporating Medical Humanities (MH) within the medical curriculum. For the first time, India's medical curriculum includes modules on the patient-doctor relationship, helping doctors to address ethical dilemmas that might arise during medical practice. Despite this progressive step, AETCOM has a number of drawbacks. Gayathri Prabhu (2) has analysed AETCOM as ossified, instrumental, lacking in a critical sensibility and failing to borrow from a humanities methodology. We would like to add to her excellent critique by examining other areas which have been overlooked within AETCOM. Our editorial addresses AETCOM's lack of sensibility towards the diversity of patients in India by focusing specifically on questions of gender, sexuality and marital status. While it is also important to understand how caste, religious, tribal and ethnic backgrounds of patients might be addressed within AETCOM, it is outside the scope of this editorial.