Do Doctors ignore women's health symptons and pain as the think it is just part of being female

[IwantToRetire]

This looks a bit expensive, but thought it might be of interest. Not online.

Throughout much of history, women’s pain and their health issues have been ignored, viewed simply as an innate part of being female. Naga Munchetty is here to change things.

It’s time women’s health is taken seriously.

In 2023, Naga Munchetty spoke out about her diagnosis of the gynaecological condition adenomyosis and her struggles to be taken seriously by healthcare professionals. The result was an incredible response from women who said they too felt dismissed by their doctors.

Journalist and broadcaster Naga Munchetty spoke to more than 80 women about their health struggles and explores the challenges of being heard, diagnosed and treated. Joining us for a candid conversation at the Royal Society of Medicine, she will tell us about her own difficulty getting answers, explore why the healthcare system can feel rigged against women, and why things still aren’t changing quickly enough.

Consulting healthcare professionals and experts every step of the way, Naga looks at what can be done to level the playing field.
What should you look out for when seeking help? How can you confidently advocate for yourself and for your loved ones at the doctor’s office and beyond? Join us for an empowering conversation to help you get the care you deserve and live life to the full.

https://howtoacademy.com/events/the-womens-health-crisis-and-how-to-thrive-despite-it/

(On re-reading it sounds a bit self helpy but maybe not ... ?)

The trouble with diagnosis-positive feminism
Taking women seriously about their health should not always mean trusting doctors
https://thecritic.co.uk/the-trouble-with-diagnosis-positive-feminism/

Oh yes, I’ve had a life time of this. Not gyne but other issues, now chronic health issues that were all dismissed and minimised repeatedly and thought to be mental health. The symptoms caused poor mental health

I had learned the hard way that whatever my mental distress [ … ] I must never, ever, go near a psychiatrist or take a psychotropic drug.”

yes me too by that age.

gp tried it again recently.

I had to self diagnose asthma. And demand that they allow me to see the asthma nurse to be checked properly. I remember the gp had said that maybe I was “someone who just needed to use a blue inhaler sometimes” as he had asked repeatedly if I had asthma and I said no. But no one had ever tested me. Just said things like - oh it’s odd you’ve another chest infection. she marched out and told him off there and then.

It seems impossible to get a diagnosis. You wait a year to be seen, they do one test, it doesn't show what's wrong and they discharge you. So you go back to the GP, get referred again, wait months, one more test, discharged again. Currently on my third referral to gastro. All the while in constant pain, bowels not functioning, can only eat a few foods. It's gone on two years now. Asked my GP for a scan as it had worsened over the last year. No she says, I'll refer you to gastro again (non urgent of course).

I've had it as well. Nothing as serious as the experience referred to in OP link.

But spent years going back and forth to local surgery where I got a reputation as as someone with figment ailments and / or standard women's issues.

But years later it was found out I had an actual diagnosible condition for which I take medication (and glad to get it on prescription) only because in fact I saw a locum who didn't have access to my notes so listened to me, not to the comments left by other doctors.

In fact writing that makes me aware it has happened to me twice, the other when I was much younger. The problem is professionals who dont want to admit they could be wrong so just wont think of looking at it differently than their first approach.

But that means I should be grateful twice over that 2 wrong diagnosis didn't lead to a really serious outcome as opposed to have them managed by medication.

Although my issues were in fact different to the OP in that is was assumed I had "female" problems that I should live with, rather than non sex specific conditions.

The second link I posted about Hilary Mantel being sectioned reminded me of this thread. So many women written off as being "mad". https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5304739-5304739-he-still-features-in-my-nightmares-how-a-sinister-psychiatrist-put-hundreds-of-women-in-deep-drug-induced-comas

I think it varies according to the doctor. My DF, who was a GP, used to say that as a man he was in no position to evaluate women's pain so he felt he should simply listen to them and believe what they were telling him.

Many of the women in my family have had such awful medical experiences that I’d rather use Dr Google and self diagnose than set foot in a GP surgery or hospital. You can pretty much guarantee that whatever your symptoms, they’ll be put down to age, weight or anxiety.

I've been dismissed a number of times. I've read many many mn threads of other women being dismissed. Not just misogyny, nor just money, I think there are many reasons.

I once had a doctor tell me "it's just period pain", after I'd been escorted from work in a wheelchair, vomiting and hyperventilating.

(I found another GP after that, who promptly said, "it sounds like endometriosis", and arranged a referral to a gynaecologist. I stayed with her for years until she retired.)

There have been a few times I've been unhappy with how well my doctor listened to me. Not so much about symptoms though.

Having worked in a medical clinic, I do think it's difficult for doctors because the fact is that they do get a lot of people who do not give good descriptions or histories, and there are also people who are kind of crazy, and grifters. Lots of all of them because they spend a lot of time in doctor's offices.

So they are always trying to sort out what is an accurate and reliable account and what isn't.

So they are always trying to sort out what is an accurate and reliable account and what isn't.

I accept that on one level, but if there response to women patients is basically sexist, ie they thing women are over exaggerating some "normal" female condition that becomes dangerous.

It is the fact they almost always seem to think if will just be some little "women's problem" and never think what else could those symptoms be.

No

Medical misogyny is positively built into our health care system which is patriarchal in origin & designed primarily for men. Hence why so many areas are only literally starting to be taken seriously - or there be any recognition of different conditions’ existence. It really highlights how little regard women have been afforded or valued by the patriarchy which operated a men first healthcare system. It happens everywhere all the time & feels worse when perpetuated by female doctors & healthcare professionals gaslighting, minimising & refusing to take our concerns, our knowledge of our own bodies & our experiences seriously. I hate it.

“The problem is professionals who dont want to admit they could be wrong so just wont think of looking at it differently than their first approach.”

I’m a vet, not a doctor, but most of the cases where I’ve gone horribly wrong were not because I didn’t want to admit I was wrong, so much as that, with a specific diagnosis in mind, it can kind of blind you to the fact that there was an erroneous assumption in there somewhere, and going back to first principles is the only way to correct it. That can take someone with a fresh set of eyes (as you had) or one of those very clever doctors (exemplified by the fictional House) who is smart enough to ignore all the “noise”.

That said, I’ve also had some awful experiences at the hands of doctors and sadly, some of them were female. A neurologist saw me and immediately diagnosed hysteria, in effect. After a week in hospital, where she put me down every time I saw her, I honestly wanted to jump out of the window.

Then there was the male gynecologist who actually told me I couldn’t be in pain and had to be told to stop what he was doing by the nurse, as I told him over and over to stop…

Going back to neurology in a few months (different place, so different doctors). I’m not feeling very optimistic, having read this thread!

I've got severe endometriosis, and could write a (very long) book on what I've experienced.

A highlight was the male GP who laughed incredulously when I asked if my symptoms could be endo and said 'what on earth makes you think you've got that?' about 6 months before I was diagnosed with extensive and very severe disease which included nodules in my rectum, bowel, bladder, ureter and pelvic ligaments. He didn't even think rectal bleeding needed any sort of investigation and blamed it all on anxiety and poor diet 🙄

Overdiagnosis is real. But I am not denying distress. For me, it’s about taking it seriously enough to ask better questions. It’s about recognising that many people’s suffering is a direct response to violence, injustice, and exclusion.

I want to live in a world where you don’t need a diagnosis to be believed.

Where survivors aren’t silenced by medical language.
Where different ways of thinking aren’t pathologised.
Where care is collective, political, and seeks justice.

Because mental health isn’t just about the mind—it’s about the world we’re living in.

And everyone deserves to be heard and supported, not pathologised and silenced.

https://womanstrust.org.uk/blog-how-to-talk-about-overdiagnosis-of-mental-health-conditions-without-dismissing-peoples-suffering/

I’ve noted before on various threads that I had an ovarian cyst confirmed by ultrasound - a (male) GP was so insistent that I needed an urgent scan following an episode of frighteningly terrible pain that I ended up having to pay for it privately because he rather shamefacedly admitted I'd have to wait weeks or months otherwise.

Anyway, a cyst was confirmed. Yet, on going back to the GP to discuss this and being unable to get an appointment with the same man, I ended up with a female doctor who scoffed at my notes, declared she didn’t think it was a cyst at all, that my pain was 'in the wrong place to be gynae', and I was suffering from ‘constipation'.

Like you, @CheekySnake, I was subsequently diagnosed with endo. Stage IV. Mind you, this was after decades of being told by GPs that my agonising period pains were 'normal'.