Why are females not believed in the medical field

Fair enough, but Im not conceding ‘woman’ to any sub-section of the patriarchy just because they want it too.
I think it’s worth holding out on that major issue, and more defiantly, too! ✊🏻

(screwed up courage) saw male GP and told him sex was painful. He looked embarrassed and sent me away.
A few years later saw female GP and told her sex was painful. (And had been for three years) Referred straight away to a male gyno. Told nothing was physically wrong with me and to go away.
A few years later read about my problem in a daily Mail article. Was physical. Cleared up in under six weeks. FFS

I have a collection of similar stories of ignored pain. I now have a pain scale on my phone to try to communicate with healthcare professionals and always get second opinions. I do not trust doctors private or NHS and advocate for myself more strongly.

My long-term issues with chronic thrush were diagnosed as "it's all in your head" (yes, even when the thrush grew in culture... amazing, the power of my head) and I was sent to a sex therapist... which angrily sent me back to the GP and explained to him that I had no mental issues with sex, I simply got a thrush infection which was painful and hard to treat every time I had sex, so of course I did not want to have sex until the primary issue was solved.

I'm a health professional myself with a PhD. I've never suffered from anxiety or depression. I still had to battle the "it's all in your head" shit.

I dont disagree wirh this but unfortunately, the word woman has been co-opted by people with male physiology. Therefore in a medical context, where physiology is crucial to diagnosis and treatment, I would use the words female and male instead of man and woman.. With the latter terms there is otherwise room for a lot of confusion nowadays

What I’ve found frustrating from the nhs is being patronised so bloody often. Everything from the maternity unit and getting woken up with the mantra ‘you’re pregnant not ill!’ to nurses asking if I was enjoying putting my feet up after having cancer. Worst of all it’s mainly been women. I don’t understand it at all.

It's so awful. You can go years trying to get a diagnosis. Nobody bothers to tell you things. You get sicker and sicker unless you can go private. They'd save so much money if they just helped you the first time of asking.

I‘m so interested in why this is. It’s also female doctors and nurses that don’t take women seriously either. Is there reasoning behind it do you think? Is there a culture of ‘women are just hysterical’ that you see?

That is awful. I would be tempted to get a formal complaint in and even a lawyer? X

I'm sorry you had to deal with that. 💐 I think I may have Long Covid as well as I have weird symptoms that started when I had Covid at the beginning of the year, but have been dismissed by my GP. If you don't mind me asking how were you able to get diagnosed in the end and were you able to get any help?

It is awful OP. I developed a number of sudden health issues and was told it was anxiety. When I said that my life was in a good place, apart from wanting to address why I’d gone from fit and healthy to falling apart, I was told I may not realise it was anxiety. It’s long covid. When I had to give up work, I was told that lots of people felt anxious about working after covid! I got long covid in 2022 - I’d already been bloody working, was fully aware that covid was around and that lockdown had finished a year earlier. I was at an appointment with a specialist looking at a scan result being told this, after I’d said how symptoms were affecting me. Although I’ve since been diagnosed with POTS amongst other things, there’s no correction on anxiety. I went for a scan and was asked several times if I have periods (I was on a period in my scan ffs). I was then asked if they were regular as though in disbelief. Despite me saying yes (ridiculous flooding since covid infection), the letter back to GP says I don’t have regular periods. Having not really used healthcare outside of pregnancies before, it’s shocking how minimising healthcare professionals can be, even when looking at clear results.

It was fine until the ‘adjective as noun’ became so intricately woven identified with manosphere language.
But long before the internet, there was always a type of man who would think in terms of ‘men’ and ‘females’.
It's a very tainted term now, and when we as women use it ourselves we legitimise that vast misogyny.
Bottom line now is that it’s a very useful shibboleth, revealing in one word about nine or ten big red flags concerning the bloke who utters it.

They even get at the scarce stocks of HRT required by biological women faster, too.

I practically had to beg my gp for a blood test, once I finally got past the receptionist triage system, which don’t even get me started on.

when I finally got my blood taken, I received a phone call 1.5 hours later to say I needed to go into hospital as an emergency and if I didn’t have someone else to drive me they would send a blue light ambulance.

Maybe some things are hard to diagnose, but I had menstrual bleeding for three months, was short of breath, dizzy and exhausted constantly and my pulse was over 110. I’d had a transfusion started less than 4 hours after the blood test I’d been asking for for three weeks.

it was hardly rocket science!

I mean the answer likely spans back centuries to when women were considered hysterical due to their wombs wandering around their bodies and their periods being the expulsion of excess humours.

A mixture of lack of understanding and study of female bodies (only just really taking off in the last half century), not having treatment options for many issues that we do know of, some hormonal issues actually presenting as anxiety, women being more likely to actually have anxiety and of course the idea that women make a hullabaloo about nothing (misogyny).

It's awful. I've had the same attitude so many times. I've now been having awful migraines and exhaustion for a couple of years now but I can't face going to the GP and being told I have anxiety, or accused of being drug seeking, which is all that has happened with previous health issues, ever since I was about 14. Before that they just blamed my mum instead. 🙄

Yep. Stage 4 endometriosis
only treated when I was referred to a female consultant who was incredible and operated on me for a full day as it was so severe
the doctors wouldn’t prescribe morphine, a&e tried to give me paracetamol, she came down and went mad that I hadn’t had proper pain relief
someone called it period pain and I was “my bowel is folded in half FFS”

Literally physically on the floor, I was so unwell and weak with a newborn, 10 years of going backwards and forwards and even offered hypnotherapy for my 'anxiety'. Eventually, I diagnosed myself with the condition by going to the library and looking at medical books (pre-internet days) and asked them to test for it. The hospital doctor sneered and said, 'It's not that. ' It was. I did get an apology from the male GP (of sorts). I always consult Dr Google now.

Literally physically on the floor, I was so unwell and weak with a newborn, 10 years of going backwards and forwards and even offered hypnotherapy for my 'anxiety'. Eventually, I diagnosed myself with the condition by going to the library and looking at medical books (pre-internet days) and asked them to test for it. The hospital doctor sneered and said, 'It's not that. ' It was. I did get an apology from the male GP (of sorts). I always consult Dr Google now.

I really don't know. I went to my GP in early May some years ago with a pain in the right side of my abdomen, and was told I had IBS and I needed to eat less spicy food and rubbish, eat more veg and drink more water.

The pain got progressively worse and I went back every two weeks for months. He refused to consider anything else, didn't suggest any tests and eventually told me I was "a woman of a certain age seeking attention".

It didn't seem to occur to him that if I was seeking attention, he was the last person I would seek it from. His arrogance and conceit were breathtaking. 😡

In mid-October I crawled into A&E at 3am in agony and passed out. I has a twisted ovarian dermoid the size of a grapefruit, a raging abdo infection and sores all up my back.

I had a two hour op, lost an ovary and tube, spent 7 days on women's surgical and six weeks off work.

Someone from the hospital must have rung him because my gp turned up at my bedside on day 2 or 3. He couldn't bring himself to apologise, the best he managed was "oh so there was something wrong with you after all." If I'd been able to sit up, I'd have beaten the arsehole to death with my drip stand.

I've had women GPs ever since and they have been wonderful, without exception.

Recently I was treated for early stage breast cancer. I had a female consultant surgeon, female consultant radiologist, female oncologist, female nurses. Professional, competent, efficient. I couldn't have been treated better or felt safer

It's men. Breathtakingly arrogant and selfish men who are so dazzled by big doctor syndrome and their own self-satisfaction that they don't give a toss about their patients.

Calling a woman a 'female' is the same as calling a person an 'it.'

Agree and it's all the more disappointing when the Dr not believing you is female herself....

I read this earlier - another case of a woman being continually ignored by the health service:

www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8dr4y51qd6o.amp

I was first accused of just having anxiety when I was 19, persistently unwell with recurring infections for four years and sore joints. It wasn’t until my late 30s an optician noticed something wasn’t right and started to look into what was really going on. I have a rare disease and I’m still questioned by doctors about it and even have junior drs when I don’t get to see my own consultant trying to amend the diagnosis because it couldn’t possibly be correct. It’s hard work because I’m constantly battling doctors to get simple things like pain relief, no I’m not just a depressed junkie looking for a fix and so I often have to ask them to contact my consultant if they have issues, oddly they never do after that. And don’t even get me started on how long it took to get HRT.

The more medical professionals ignore you or don’t listen of course you get more anxious. It’s actually a normal reaction to knowing something is wrong but not being sure what or if you will get treatment.

Had this problem a few years ago when I had severe back pain. Waited forever to see a specialist NHS (male) physio. Just to be told he couldn’t find anything wrong and I ‘couldn’t possibly be in the amount of pain I was describing’ because I was young and looked fit and healthy. I was told he would be doing a full skeletal examination and to wear sports bra & shorts. He didn’t even get me to undress or examine me properly. He could tell “just by the way I was standing” that my pain wasn’t real apparently! He made me feel like I was wasting precious NHS time and money and being dramatic. It took me paying hundreds of pounds for a private spinal doctor a few months later to diagnose the fact I had a slipped disc that was so far out they had to do emergency surgery there and then. I made a formal complaint about the physio, and got a reply to it saying how “highly regarded” he was and pressuring me to drop it by his male boss. Such utter bullshit. I did drop it because I was just so fed-up with it all. I wish I hadn’t though.