PM says one hour menopause training for medical students is not acceptable

Training gap

An investigation has found that some medical schools in England and Wales give students as little as one hour of menopause training across a five-year degree. The finding has prompted the prime minister to say that one hour is not acceptable and to call for training programmes to be rethought.

Freedom of information requests were sent to every medical school in England and Wales. They showed wide variation in how menopause is taught. One in five schools provided a maximum of 90 minutes of structured teaching. In some cases, the teaching amounted to a single one-hour lecture, and that time sometimes covered other topics such as fertility. Until recently, menopause was not a mandatory part of the curriculum, meaning some existing GPs may have qualified without any training on it.

Medical institutions say students are expected to learn most about menopause during clinical placements. But the investigation found that some students may not encounter a woman going through menopause during their training. Existing clinicians are also not always upskilled in menopause care, raising concerns about a situation where the blind lead the blind. Women have described a postcode lottery in access to help, with many forced to pay privately. Dr Louise Newson, who runs a private menopause clinic, said she was shocked that medical schools had a wilful blindness to the importance of hormones.

Mental health link

The investigation also highlighted the link between menopause and mental health. Research from Liverpool John Moores University spoke to almost 1,000 women going through perimenopause and menopause. It found that suicidal thoughts fell by 92% when women were prescribed hormone replacement therapy. Suicide rates for women peak between the ages of 45 and 54, the ages when perimenopause and menopause typically happen, and the number of suicides in that age group is rising. Experts say the effect of changing hormones on mental health has often been ignored or underplayed.

One family described how Helen, a menopausal woman, sought help but was given antidepressants. In 2021 she took her own life. Her daughter, Heather, said her mother rang a crisis line on the day she died and was told to go to A&E. She had already been to A&E, where she was told to speak to her GP. Heather said her mother was stuck in a cycle she could not break.

HRT safety and political response

Concerns about the safety of HRT have also been addressed. The investigation said worries that HRT causes breast cancer stem from outdated research that has now been debunked and related to synthetic hormones used in the past. Body-identical hormones now carry a much lower risk. But many women and doctors still believe HRT is dangerous, and that lack of awareness feeds into poor support.

The prime minister said the one-hour figure was nowhere near acceptable and that training programmes needed rethinking. He said this could not be done overnight but that society had become more aware of the impact of menopause on women's lives. In 2022 the government announced that doctors in England would receive mandatory training to better treat female medical conditions. Many frontline GPs say gaps in undergraduate training remain. Campaigners say that until doctors are better educated about menopause, women will continue to be failed.