The findings of a review commissioned in February 2018 were announced this week. It was a gut-punch moment for those of us who care about women’s health and addressing all the barriers, systems, challenges and bias that exist within gynaecological health care.
The review was the result of patient led campaigns – and the vast majority of those patients were women.
Women who had not been listened to, had certainly not felt heard and who suffered with poor short and long term health as a result.
And all this when they were actively seeking help from their doctors and specialists.
More than 700 women and their families shared ‘harrowing’ details – all too often their worries dismissed as ‘women’s problems’.
The review concluded that arrogant attitudes left women traumatised, intimidated and confused. The chair of the review, Baroness Julia Cumberlege said she was shocked by both the ‘sheer scale’ and the ‘intensity of the suffering’. Indeed, she declared, that of all the reviews that she had overseen, she’d never encountered anything like it and most damningly: ‘Much of this suffering was entirely avoidable, caused and compounded by failings in the health system itself.’
We must learn and we must do better for women.
Doctors want to do their best. We have a health care system that strives for excellent, empathetic care. We need to address why this fails, all too often, for women’s specific conditions.
It’s this system that means far too often women with bloating, a vulval itch, bleeding that isn’t normal for them, worries about discharge – are seen by their GPs up to half a dozen times before they’re referred to a specialist. It’s this system that means far too often, a cancer diagnosis comes late.
That’s where Eve comes in, and why we need you to join us and support our work. We have a razorsharp focus on the five gynae cancers and drive all our funds, awareness and campaigns into one area: prevention. Fundamental to looking after your gynae health is addressing the taboos that surround it: the language, the lack of knowledge, banishing the shame and the embarrassment.
Nothing that’s worrying you as a patient should ever be dismissed as ‘women’s issues’ – not by the woman herself or by a clinician. We need to educate women to know the signs and symptoms, recognise when something isn’t normal for them and seek help. We also need to empower patients to talk to doctors, nurses and other specialists in a way that helps them be heard and never be dismissed, fobbed off, passed from ‘one doctor to another’.
So let’s make sure the publication of this review isn’t a heart sink moment but a call to arms: the health system must learn from the women it has failed and Eve will work relentlessly to equip women of today and the future with the knowledge they need to be heard and have a voice.
Institutional denial and inequality has no place in health care.