SFEBES2023 Poster Presentations Reproductive Endocrinology (42 abstracts)
Patient and healthcare providers experience of access to menopause-related information and menopause-care provision across the UK: Results from a nationwide survey
Kanyada Koysombat 1,2 , Hugo Pedder 3 , Yana Vinogradova 4 , Ambreen Qayum 2 , Alexander N Comninos 1,2 , Vikram Talaulikar 5 , Nick Panay 6 , Waljit S Dhillo 1,2 , Annice Mukherjee 7,8 & Ali Abbara 1,2
1Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom. 2Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, London, United Kingdom. 3University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom. 4University of Nottingham School of Medicine, Nottingham, United Kingdom. 5Reproductive Medicine Unit, University College London, London, United Kingdom. 6Queen Charlotte’s and Chelsea Hospital, London, United Kingdom. 7Centre for Intelligent Healthcare, Coventry University, Coventry, United Kingdom. 8Spire Manchester Hospital, Manchester, United Kingdom
Menopause management guidelines advocate a personalised, evidence-based approach to menopause-care. This study explored the current landscape of menopause-care, from both patients’ and healthcare-providers’ perspectives, to better understand barriers to menopause-care across the UK.
Methods: A 25-question online patient-survey and a 23-question GP-survey was designed with individuals with lived-experience of menopause to understand access to and provision of menopause-care throughout the UK. The NIHR People-in-Research, VOICE websites, and menopause charities’ social-media platforms were used to widen the survey’s reach. The surveys were hosted on Qualtrics XM® and utilised convenience-sampling to gather nationwide experiences of menopause-care between September–December 2022.
Results: Patient-survey
Overall, 339 respondents aged 29-78 years across the UK participated. Collectively, NHS GPs provided 53.8% of menopause-related consultations. Almost half (48.4%) of patients experienced waiting-times of ≥12 months, and 23.4% ≥24 months. Appointment availability was the most frequent barrier to menopause-care (28.6%). 52% felt that insufficient information was provided to facilitate shared-decision making (SDM) and frequently resorted to additional resources. Social-media was most frequently utilised sources of information (18.4%; Facebook-7.2%; Instagram-7.2%; YouTube-2.6% and Twitter-1.3%) whilst official websites were used by only 12.9%.
GP-survey
Despite providing up to 100 menopause-related consultations per month, the majority of GP practices (84.6%) did not offer dedicated menopause services, and none of the GP-respondents (n=18) had receive additional training in menopause-care. ‘Complex risk-interactions’ and ‘lack of consultation time’ were cited as the greatest challenges (81.8%).
Conclusion: This nationwide survey reaffirms that GPs provide majority of menopause-related consultations. Time-limited consultations, complex risk-interactions of menopause treatments compounded by lack of menopause-specific training challenged provision of optimal menopause-care. The disparity in access to specialist menopause-services, gaps in information provision and impact on SDM were highlighted. These findings are important to guide relevant nationwide service improvements for menopause-care in line with the Government’s Women’s Health Strategy.
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Endocrine Abstracts
ISSN 1470-3947 (print) | ISSN 1479-6848 (online)
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