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Institute of Medicine;. 2004[cited 2020 Mar 2];116–36. Integrating concerns of gender, sexuality and marital status in the medical curriculum NIKHIL GOVIND, KETAKI CHOWKHANI Authors: Nikhil Govind (nikhilgovind@hotmail.com), Associate Professor and Head, Manipal Centre for Humanities, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Manipal 576 104, Karnataka, INDIA; Ketaki Chowkhani (kchowkhani@gmail.com), Postdoctoral Fellow, Manipal Centre for Humanities, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Manipal 576 104, Karnataka, INDIA. To cite: Govind N, Chowkhani K. Integrating concerns of gender, sexuality and marital status in the medical curriculum. Indian J Med Ethics. 2020 Apr-Jun;5(2) NS: 92-4.DOI:10.20529/IJME.2020.039. Manuscript Editor: Olinda Timms Peer Reviewers: Shilpa Phadke, Mala Ramanathan, Johnson Pradeep. ©Indian Journal of Medical Ethics 2020 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. Sections within AETCOM which refer to a patient-doctor relationship do two things: one, they understand both patients and doctors as homogeneous and monolithic categories; two, they describe the different situations a patient might be in, but not the different modes of being of different patients. Patients from different socio-cultural background might have or adopt different modes of being. A failure to recognise and deal with these different modes of being of patients has led to a serious lapse in medical ethics. This has been the case with patients outside the heteronormative fold, including LGBTQ people, single people, women, adolescents and so on.