Women’s Health Week
This week we celebrate Women’s Health Week: encouraging women to take ownership of their health, feel empowered, and connect with their GP. It’s also a timely reminder to acknowledge our growing female GP workforce, as well as for us, as GPs, to ensure we set aside the time to look after our own health.
This Women’s Health Week, I want to thank all the female GPs, but male GP allies too, who look after women’s health.
Women’s health is complex, and the data is showing that female GPs provide the lion’s share of it.
Women’s health consultations usually take longer because of these complexities, and female GPs tend to see more patients with mental health issues than our male colleagues. The 2023 Health of the Nation report found almost eight in 10 female GPs reported mental health among their top three reasons for patient presentations.
Many of our patients are women aged older than 65 – contraception and menopause is GPs’ bread and butter. As is pregnancy care. Women are more likely to have had contact with a GP for pregnancy, contraception, child health and routine screening.
These are areas of health that require time and trust, which is why we continue to advocate for longer consultations to be properly funded (more on that below).
As female GPs, as well as patients, we bring our own lived experiences, often in the role of carers. For female GPs it’s also crucial that we have our own GP to make sure we keep up to date with all of our checks.
The female GP workforce is also growing: 61% of general practice registrars are women and 50% of GPs are women. By 2048 that will be almost 56%. Workforce data is showing that women are increasing their work hours in general practice and men’s are reducing and coming into alignment.
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