Women’s Health: What we want to know, what we need to know

We were interested to see the result of the Jean Hailes Society for Women’s Health recent survey on women’s health. This survey of over 3000 women and health professionals was the first of it’s kind in Australia.

The survey indicated that many women wanted more specialised women health facilities. One third of women wanted more women’s health clinic and one quarter wanted more doctors to be trained in women’s health.

It also showed an unfortunate lack of knowledge in two important conditions painful sex and polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS).

This unfortunate lack of knowledge likely contributes to the frustration we often see in women with these conditions. They often express frustration with the lack of knowledge of those around them and the process in seeking help.

We feel that we are helping to meet the needs expressed in the survey via:

• Running our women’s health clinic
• Ensuring all our staff are well educated on women’s health issues
• Conducting research studies and publishing widely on female health issues, including both painful sex and PCOS
• Currently running a research study on PCOS. You can follow or contribute to via the study’s facebook page
• Running clinical trials of treatments for women sexual health problems. If you would like to be contacted about these studies, you can sign up to our research database

We still remain aware of how much more there is to be done.

In the interest of raising awareness of these and other female health issues, we will be distributing educational materials in Watling Walk in Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital on Friday the 11th of September. If you are in the area, come and see us to get more information.  If you would like to know more but are unable to attend, please feel free to contact us.