Monaghan GP Dr Aideen Brides said before May 2021 it was difficult to get patients to talk about menopause and hormone replacement therapy (HRT).
But “Professor Joe Duffy”, who had long discussions on menopause on his daily radio programme, and “Dr Davina McCall”, the English television presenter who made documentaries on the issue and spoke about her own experience, changed all that.
“All of a sudden, in the space of a week, all we were dealing with was menopause and HRT,” she told the Irish Medical Organisation AGM in Killarney, Co Kerry.
“It was a huge volume of work and very complex. We can all do it but it is not without a lot of work,” she said.
She told how she reached the “top of her frustration” when she got a call from a long-distance lorry driver who informed her that Joe Duffy said he had the male menopause.
She now sees around two to three patients a day about the menopause that she was not seeing four or five years ago. Dr Brides said there should be structured health programmes for patients, run by their GP on the menopause, contraception and osteoporosis screening.
These programmes would give the patient a number of free consultations a year with the GP, who would be paid a fee by the HSE to deliver the care.
She pointed out that the last health minister Stephen Donnelly set up menopause hubs, but many of her patients cannot afford to travel to Dublin to see the specialists.
“GPs are best placed to deliver the programme. We know our patients,” she said.
She also called for a similar structured programme, led by GPs, for contraception for women aged 17 to 55. It would include access to long-lasting contraception.
There is also a need for a programme for osteoporosis screening at GP surgeries, she said, pointing out that one in two women and one in four men will get an osteoporosis-related fracture in their lifetime. Osteoporosis fractures cost around €300m a year and a patient can be in hospital for an average of 17 days as a result.
The meeting supported a motion to enter in to negotiations with the HSE on the commitment in the Programme for Government to provide a comprehensive women’s health programme in general practice.
Separately, Dr Tadhg Crowley, a GP in Kilkenny who is head of the IMO’s GP committee, warned of the implications of upcoming proposals for a shared care record for patients and other IT developments which could increase the workload on family doctors.
He called for further engagement with the Department of Health and the HSE on the developments saying: “We don’t want anything that interferes with patient time. Anything that takes away from that is bad for the patient.”
#Doctors #big #rise #women #attending #menopause #care #Professor #Joe #Duffy #effect
