Ask & Answer

Why Don't More Doctors Feel Confident Treating Menopause?

If a provider has ever rushed past your symptoms or told you "that's just perimenopause" without much else, a 2019 survey of medical residents suggests it's rarely about you explaining it badly. It's a documented, measurable training gap.

By Reese Calloway · Health Claims Researcher

Our Women's Health investigation flags this finding as its most serious moment — not a safety warning, but an access-and-credibility one. This piece goes deeper into the actual study behind it: who was surveyed, what they were asked, and what the numbers really show.

The study itself

The finding comes from "Menopause Management Knowledge in Postgraduate Family Medicine, Internal Medicine, and Obstetrics and Gynecology Residents: A Cross-Sectional Survey," published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings in February 2019 (Kling et al., Vol. 94, Issue 2, pp. 242–253). Researchers e-mailed an anonymous survey to residents at every postgraduate level in family medicine, internal medicine, and OB/GYN programs across the US. Of 703 surveys sent, 183 residents from 20 different residency programs responded.

The headline number. Of 177 residents who answered the relevant question, only 12 — 6.8% — reported feeling adequately prepared to manage a patient going through menopause. One in five (20.3%) said they'd never received a single menopause lecture during their entire residency.

It wasn't just a confidence gap — it showed up in real clinical decisions

The survey didn't stop at how prepared residents felt; it asked what they'd actually do. The results tracked with the low confidence numbers: 34.4% said they would not offer hormone therapy to a symptomatic, newly menopausal patient with no contraindications — a treatment most current guidelines consider a reasonable first-line option for that exact patient. Only 38.7% said they would prescribe hormone therapy through the natural age of menopause for a patient who experienced premature menopause, even though continuing it that long is standard guidance for that specific situation.

Notably, the gap wasn't about residents not caring. A full 93.8% said they believed it was important or very important to be trained in menopause management. The problem the survey documents is a training pipeline that isn't delivering on that stated priority, not a lack of interest from the residents themselves.

One important honest limit of this number

The 6.8% figure is a combined rate across all three specialties surveyed together — family medicine, internal medicine, and OB/GYN. The published abstract doesn't break that number down by specialty, so it isn't accurate to say a specific percentage of OB/GYN residents alone felt confident; the study simply didn't report that breakout. We'd rather say that plainly than repeat a more specific-sounding number we couldn't verify against the actual paper.

The bottom line

A real, peer-reviewed 2019 survey found that only 6.8% of surveyed medical residents across family medicine, internal medicine, and OB/GYN felt adequately prepared to manage a menopausal patient — and that gap showed up in their actual treatment decisions, not just their self-reported confidence. If a doctor's visit about perimenopause or menopause has felt rushed or dismissive, this survey is real evidence that the gap is structural and well-documented, not a reflection of how clearly you described what you're experiencing.

See the full Women's Health investigation — how Sesame Care splits same-day acute care from an ongoing menopause & PCOS plan, and why that structural difference matters for exactly this kind of gap.

Read the full Women's Health investigation →

Sources

Not medical advice. Talk to a real prescribing physician or menopause-trained specialist about your own health history. Questions about this piece? Email contact@healthyhealthsecrets.com. See also our About page and affiliate disclosure.