Source · Select Committees · Women and Equalities Committee
Recommendation 10
10
Accepted
Paragraph: 53
Medical misogyny and racism lead to dismissed pain in women's reproductive healthcare.
Conclusion
There is a clear lack of awareness and understanding of women’s reproductive health conditions among primary healthcare practitioners, particularly when those conditions occur in young women and girls. Women are finding their symptoms normalised and their pain dismissed, with an ingrained belief among some healthcare professionals that women, 73 particularly those from a minority ethnic background, are exaggerating their symptoms. Such medical misogyny and racism is unacceptable.
Government Response Summary
The government agreed on the importance of addressing women’s pain and experiences. It committed that NHS England, with DHSC, will review the potential of conducting the Reproductive Health Survey regularly and that NHS England will review national data collection processes and protocols, including scoping a patient experience measure for women’s health services.
Paragraph Reference:
53
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
We agree with the importance of understanding and improving women’s experiences of procedures and ensuring women’s pain is not dismissed. We are working with NHS England and the Women’s Health Ambassador on how we take forward the Women’s Health Strategy for England (linked in ‘Introduction’ above) by aligning it to the government’s missions and forthcoming 10 Year Health Plan. As part of this, we will consider the committee’s recommendations on key performance indicators and metrics. The NHS does not currently collect data centrally on the number of women who experience pain, or receive pain relief, during a hysteroscopy or other procedures. However, patient experiences more broadly are routinely collected for people attending healthcare services through the Friends and Family Test . Pain relief will be recorded for individuals in their medical records by the practitioner performing the procedure and therefore proactive local audits can be conducted within healthcare settings to review local practices. The government’s Reproductive Health Survey for England 2023 (linked in the government response to ‘Recommendation 6’ in ‘Accessing a diagnosis’ above) received more than 52,000 responses. NHS England, together with DHSC , will review the potential of conducting this survey on a regular basis to monitor self-reported experience of healthcare at population level. NHS England will review national data collection processes and protocols, and consideration will be given to scoping a patient experience measure for women’s health services, including procedural pain, as part of work to develop next steps for the Women’s Health Strategy for England.