AAA<\/p>\n
The pain was so excruciating that Dr Jeanne-Marie Van Der Westhuizen would have preferred death.<\/p>\n
As she lay in her hospital bed, she could feel a wet patch on her sheets beneath her back. To the veteran medical doctor, it was confirmation of what she had suspected hours earlier: her epidural line had dislodged, cutting off the anaesthesia supposed to numb the pain of a gruelling marathon operation dubbed the \u201cmother of all surgeries\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was the worst pain that I have ever, ever, ever imagined,\u201d Van Der Westhuizen said. \u201cIf there was anything around me that I could have killed myself with, I would have done it.\u201d<\/p>\n
But her treating doctor didn\u2019t believe she was in pain.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, it looks like you\u2019re having a panic attack,\u201d Van Der Westhuizen recalled her doctor telling her. \u201cI think you need some Valium.\u201d<\/p>\n
This harrowing sequence of events is not a shocking outlier. Van Der Westhuizen is among thousands of Australian women who have shared \u201cgut-wrenching\u201d accounts of their pain being dismissed as all in their head, or just part of being a woman, with this masthead, and multiple <\/a>government inquiries<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cYou think we\u2019ve made progress \u2013 and we have, in many ways \u2013 but there\u2019s still so much work to do, and so much more that we\u2019re still grappling against,\u201d said Professor Sue Matthews, co-chair of one of those inquiries.<\/p>\n There is now wide support within the medical profession for reform to address persistent, dangerous gender bias, but disagreement on the way forward.<\/p>\n Related Article The federal government is reviewing a nationwide audit of curriculums at every school of medicine, nursing, psychology, and other health and allied health courses.<\/p>\n It could prompt a major shake-up in how future healthcare practitioners are taught about the ways sex and gender can fundamentally shape a patient\u2019s pain, presentations and reactions.<\/p>\n But medical school heads have called much of the criticism of their courses ill-informed, arguing a better target would be retraining overseas-trained medicos and old-guard practitioners with outdated views.<\/p>\n Gender bias and women\u2019s health experts want change on multiple fronts, including new pain guidelines, greater funding for longer GP consultations, reviewing and replacing flawed research and a hotline to access specialist advice on women\u2019s pain.<\/p>\n \u2018It\u2019s akin to torture\u2019<\/p>\n As Van Der Westhuizen\u2019s epidural anaesthesia wore off, she was in intensive care following massive surgery and hot internal chemotherapy for a rare appendix cancer. Several of her organs had been removed, and her abdomen was being filled daily with more chemotherapy.<\/p>\n She could feel some of the probing pricks from nurses testing that her anaesthesia was still working.<\/p>\n \u201cI said to them: I think there\u2019s a problem \u2026 I\u2019m starting to feel more and more.\u201d<\/p>\n The nurses assured her that her pain relief would be adequate overnight. But she woke to raging pain. When her doctor arrived two hours later, the feeling was indescribable.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve never forgotten that image of her. She was young, probably in her 30s. She had glasses on, and just the lack of empathy, of humanity, of any kind of comfort, was horrific,\u201d said Van Der Westhuizen, whose experience in a Sydney hospital contributed to a later post-traumatic stress disorder diagnosis.<\/p>\n \u201cI just had a complete loss of agency. They were pouring chemotherapy into my belly. I couldn\u2019t get out of bed, and no one was believing me or listening to me,\u201d she said. \u201cI suppose it\u2019s akin to torture.\u201d<\/p>\n It took six years and multiple investigations from when Van Der Westhuizen first presented with pelvic pain for her to receive a cancer diagnosis. By then, it had spread. She wonders if the diagnosis would have taken so long if she were a man.<\/p>\n Related Article After witnessing medical misogyny at play on three continents during her 36-year career, Van Der Westhuizen wants medical students and young doctors to learn about unconscious gender bias by listening to patients like herself tell their stories.<\/p>\n \u201cYou need to be able to really get people to understand what it is, what it means. And I think stories are the most powerful way of enacting change,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Fixing the classroom?<\/p>\n The federal government has not yet released the findings of the audit that was completed last year of more than 8000 curriculums at 123 institutions responsible for educating every accredited healthcare and allied health practitioner. The Health Department said the report was undergoing quality assurance checks, which have taken longer than expected to complete.<\/p>\n But Professor Bronwyn Graham, who led the audit, said the key issue was that too often students were not being told that the course content \u2013 presented as gender-neutral \u2013 was based on evidence developed using males.<\/p>\n \u201cMale subjects, male presentations, risk factors and responses\u201d, said Graham, director of the Centre for Sex and Gender Equity in Health and Medicine. \u201cThe assumption that students take away is this is just what we do for all patients.\u201d<\/p>\n As a result, women\u2019s pain is much more likely to be dismissed or denied, while men are more likely to be believed, Graham said.<\/p>\n Doctor and medical philosophy researcher Lea Merone has similar concerns. Her 2024 analysis<\/a> of six textbooks recommended by Australian medical schools found all implied women and men had the same symptoms for the analysed diseases.<\/p>\n \u201cIn an ideal world \u2026 there would be separate modules or streams for women\u2019s disease, and men\u2019s disease, but it needn\u2019t really be that complicated,\u201d Merone said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe could bridge this gap by, when we\u2019re teaching about a specific disease, talking about the differences between men and women in their test results and in their presentations.\u201d<\/p>\n To fix the curriculums, Australia\u2019s gold standard clinical guidelines \u2013 which cover everything from anaesthesia to lung cancer \u2013 needed updating, Graham said. A Monash University study<\/a> found 15 per cent of 80 clinical practice guidelines made no reference to sex or gender, and more than half did not consider gender in clinical practice.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, work was finally under way to develop pelvic pain management guidelines, redressing a glaring oversight considering chronic pelvic pain affects up to one in four Australian women.<\/p>\n Fixing the clinician?Related Article Merone recalls an incident that took place when she was a junior doctor in the UK. A woman was unconscious, shaking on a hospital\u2019s bathroom floor. She didn\u2019t flinch when a pharyngeal tube was inserted into her nose and throat to help her breathe.<\/p>\n When she asked a more senior doctor what had caused the woman\u2019s seizure, he replied, \u201cShe\u2019s a young woman with abdominal pain. That wasn\u2019t a real seizure. She was faking it.\u201d<\/p>\n Merone was shocked. \u201cSomebody who\u2019s faking it, they would flinch; that\u2019s darned uncomfortable,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Some argue it\u2019s these anachronistic attitudes from established health professionals that should be the bigger target for change than the teachings of universities, which say they have done a lot of work to embed differences between sexes and genders in their curriculum.<\/p>\n \u201cI think historically that\u2019s a valid criticism, but I think there\u2019s been a lot of change in this area,\u201d said Professor Mike McGuckin, the University of Melbourne\u2019s interim dean of medicine, dentistry and health sciences. \u201cIf you walked into one of the current courses, it would be very different to what people were experiencing 10 or 15 years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n At the University of NSW, second-year medical students undertake a course on gender bias in medicine and medical research. Its teachings include how cardiovascular disease is underdiagnosed in women.<\/p>\n University of Sydney psychology students learn about how gender bias in research and diagnostic criteria has led to underdiagnosis of ADHD and autism in females.<\/p>\n McGuckin said the way to have \u201cthe most impact in a hurry\u201d was by retraining existing health professionals, some of whom had qualified 30 or 40 years ago. He said the University of Melbourne was discussing with the Victorian government how it could contribute to this.<\/p>\n Related Article Professor Michelle Leech, president of Medical Deans of Australia and New Zealand, the peak body representing medical schools, said these institutions were responsible for training only about half of the doctors newly accredited to work in Australia\u2019s public health system. To meet workforce needs, the other half were trained overseas.<\/p>\n \u201cSo you could spend a whole lot of money on boosting nursing and medical curricula in this country, but you\u2019re not even getting to half the people,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Leech, who is also the head of Monash University\u2019s medical program, argued against simply adding more lectures to busy courses, and instead made the case for more placements for medical students in general practice and other community health settings. The vast majority of students\u2019 practical training still takes place in hospitals.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s like they only see half the world,\u201d Leech said. \u201cIf you\u2019re just in the hospital, you just don\u2019t see the patient\u2019s long story.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n She also called for funding to expand \u201cpatient partner\u201d programs, which bring people who have or have had health conditions into universities to share their experiences.<\/p>\n \u201cIt makes you feel something when you hear somebody\u2019s real story. When you feel something, you remember,\u201d Leech said.<\/p>\n Unpicking centuries of bias <\/p>\n One of those stories comes from Victorian woman Kelly (not her real name), who recalls being dismissed and misdiagnosed by half-a-dozen doctors after she suddenly started experiencing searing pain after sex.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was so bad I\u2019d scream,\u201d said the Melbourne mother and student. \u201cLike I\u2019d been douched with acid.\u201d<\/p>\n Several GPs quickly concluded she had a urinary tract infection. One doctor suggested she had been \u201csubconsciously tensing up\u201d because of past sexual trauma, Kelly said.<\/p>\n A gynaecologist recommended she see a psychiatrist.<\/p>\n Kelly said it took years for her to feel safe enough to raise the issue again with a non-judgmental female GP, who diagnosed a semen allergy.<\/p>\n MEDICAL MISOGYNY: A CALL TO ACTION<\/p>\n The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald have launched an investigation into medical misogyny: ingrained, systemic sexism across Australia\u2019s healthcare system, medical research and practice.\u00a0<\/p>\n More than 2000 women shared their experiences as part of our crowdsourced investigative series, which prompted a national outpouring of grief and frustration as women described feeling gaslit, dismissed or being told their pain was \u201call in their head\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n We are calling on the federal government to boost Medicare funding for GP appointments that last more than 20 minutes to improve care for women and others with complex health conditions.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Albanese government and the Coalition have promised to pour $8.5 billion into Medicare to make GP visits more affordable and improve bulk-billing rates, but longer 20-minute appointments will receive a smaller proportional funding increase.\u00a0<\/p>\n Doctors have warned<\/a> that the plan could further disadvantage women by continuing to incentivise shorter consultations, which don\u2019t give GPs enough time to address menopause, pelvic pain, and other women\u2019s health issues.<\/p>\n Until the late 1990s, the condition was thought to be extremely rare \u2013 with fewer than 100 formally documented cases. But the latest research suggests the disorder, which can cause anaphylaxis in severe cases, could affect an estimated 12 per cent of the women who report pain after sex.<\/p>\n This lack of knowledge when it comes to confounding conditions that exclusively or predominantly affect women is at the heart of a global push to fund more research aimed at demystifying them.<\/p>\n In a major step forward, from this year, the Australian government\u2019s Medical Research Future Fund will only finance research that considers sex and gender variations at every stage of the process.<\/p>\n A more ambitious goal, requiring far greater investment, is to unpick centuries of research bias, said Professor Sue Matthews, chief executive of the Royal Women\u2019s Hospital in Melbourne and co-chair of the Victorian Inquiry into Women\u2019s Pain.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u201cStarting fresh from now is great, but what about all the drugs that we\u2019ve prescribed for decades that are all based on [testing done on] men?\u201d Matthews said.<\/p>\n Of the 10 prescription drugs banned by the US medicines regulator between 1997 and 2000 due to severe adverse effects, eight caused greater health risks in women<\/a>, and a ninth belonged to a drug class known to pose a greater risk for women. Australia followed suit, banning most of these drugs in 2004.<\/p>\n Matthews also floated the establishment of a hotline for general practitioners and other healthcare workers to access specialist advice on women\u2019s health and women\u2019s pain.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n At the Royal Women\u2019s and Royal Melbourne Hospitals, a review of cardiac, neurology, nephrology and urology services is under way to identify sex and gender differences in patient treatment.<\/p>\n For instance, do women take longer to get an ECG when they present with cardiac pain? If so, with some education and support, can the hospitals fix this?<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a really strong way to set the tone for the organisation that we expect sex and gender to be part of what you think about when you\u2019re providing care,\u201d Matthews said.<\/p>\n![\"Penny](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/06108855860e2ab1b293edbce87b6ca65aac1876.jpeg\")
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Van Der Westhuizen says it\u2019s important that stories like hers are shared.Dan Peled<\/p>\n![\"Jenny](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1782333925_70_fefcbff3bfb93f9d100fbfd0d3f9c23858a20952.jpeg\")
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Professor Bronwyn Graham, director of the Centre for Sex and Gender Equity in Health and Medicine.Louise Kennerley<\/p>\n![\"Jana](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/5bd12a784f61caa67e3d6c51305f0adeec0f5bfe.jpeg\")
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