Elevating Women’s Health: A Call for GP Education with Julia Browne
- 20 September 2023
- 37.47M
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In most Western countries, there’s no requirement for GPs to have any knowledge of menopause and the complications it can cause. Indeed, in Australia, until recently, any study of Menopause was an optional extra in a medical degree even though 50% of women will suffer symptoms that impact their lives.
A group of women have launched a petition to send to the government to request that keeping up to date with the latest research on menopause becomes compulsory for all GPs
You’re at work, in a meeting or giving a presentation to a room full of people and suddenly you have no idea what you were going to say, it’s completely gone.
You work in a scientific or high tech environment which involves technical terms that you’ve been familiar with for your entire life but suddenly you can’t remember the terms or what they mean.
You’re picking your kids up from school and you go over to one of your child’s friend’s mothers, but you can’t remember the child’s name even though they’ve been to your house on multiple occasions.
Sound familiar? When that happens to us, our first thought is probably “I’ve got early onset dementia!” So we get stressed out and anxious and we start noticing how many times this happens to us and it begins to happen more and more frequently until we feel like we’re unable to function properly, so we quit our jobs because we don’t feel like we’re capable of holding that position any more.
We go to our GP and they probably give us sleeping tablets and SSRI’s. They might say to us, “It’s probably menopause, you’ll be okay in a few years”. Years ! What do we do in the meantime? We don’t feel that we can function, so we get onto social media and, if we feel confident enough, join a few groups and discover that so many other women are experiencing this yet our doctors told us nothing about it.
Join me in conversation with Julia Browne, co-founder of Peri-Pausers, a group determined to bring this lack of support and information to the attention of the government.
Timestamps:
- 01:25 – Why Julia Browne started a petition to make menopause education a priority for GPs
- 14:44 – How the peri-pauser’s group started from misinformation and lack of support
- 22:28 – The stages of menopause & when they impact women
- 23:57 – Menopausal is NOT at the end of your life
- 27:39 – Calling the government to take action to prioritise menopause education
- 32:48 – Menopause is treated like an optional extra in the education of our doctors
- 35:06 – The disparities & inequality between male and female health studies
- 40:01 – How YOU can help
- Sign the petition: https://www.change.org/p/urgent-call-to-action-for-comprehensive-menopause-education-for-australian-doctors?source_location=topic_page
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4HE8K3QEnw
About Today’s Guest: Julia Browne
Certified telephone counsellor/support worker
Julia Browne has been discussing menopause for a number of years appearing on the podcast “ Menopause Whilst Black” and more recently appearing on ABC’s -The Truth About Menopause with Myf Warhurst.
She felt the need to start the petition after joining a Instagram chat group, created by her friend Maria Harran, when under and misdiagnosis of menopause symptoms by GPs was a reaccuring them.
