What women want

The Medical Republic

The latest episode of The Medical Republic podcast is a special insight into female parts across the age spectrum.

We speak first with Associate Professor Melissa Kang who was, for 23 years, the iconic Dolly Doctor in Dolly magazine – the Australian teen-girl’s bible for many decades.

Professor Kang said that teenagers want to know how to navigate the health system and that young women are keen to talk about sexual health but need the GP to raise the topic first.

“Research has also told us that young women want GPs to bring up the difficult topics. They want GPs to introduce the topic of sexual health or sex or intimacy,” she said.

Professor Kang said that creates a bit of a mismatch because GPs often feel that those topics are too personal and sensitive.

“They are waiting for patients to bring it up themselves, whereas young women are saying, “No, we want GPs to do it!”. So, as doctors, we do need to create that space,” Professor Kang said.

We also talk about whether young women’s health concerns have changed over the last few decades. Professor Kang said that young women have more health knowledge these days but that some concerns are enduring.

“The stigmatization of their bodies and their sexuality. I don't think that has changed an awful lot over the decades that I've been working with young people as a doctor,” she said.

Dr Talat Uppal, our second guest, also that even midlife women experience taboo and shame about their bodies and that their health concerns are often minimised. She said that if a woman says she's having pain, even from a point of view of ischemic heart disease, they are more likely to be “fobbed off” by doctors than men.

“It never sees this to amaze me how much women put up with prior to seeking care or sometimes they've sought care but they have not been proactively managed as well as we would hope,” Dr Uppal says.

As a gynacologist and obstetrician, Dr Uppal opened her a multidisciplinary team based care clinic, in Sydney. The team draws on a range of expertise including a GP, colorectal specialist, nurse practitioners and physiotherapists.

Women’s Health Road cares for women health across their lifespan; from teenage girls with menstrual problems right through to older women with prolapse.

“It genuinely gives me joy when I see the difference in quality of care that the woman has access to, which has not been from what just I could do personally, rather, it has been the contribution of all the other tenanted clinicians in our team,” she says.

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