Around one in eight Australian women live with PMOS. Clearer diagnosis and multidisciplinary care are key to supporting their reproductive, metabolic and psychological health across the lifespan.
In Australia our long life expectancy is both a major public health achievement and a challenge, as the complexity in the care of older adults increases.
The old is making way for the new on InSight+
Over the last decade, I have worked with a team of editors and authors on an international book on sexual harassment in medicine, which has been published by Cambridge University Press. It has been a long, sometimes surprising and deeply disturbing analysis of a complex problem with world-wide ramifications.
A psychologist colleague recently described a session with a new patient. When she asked why the person had been referred to her, the patient replied: “My GP said you were such a lovely person.” I’m sure she is. But it raises a clinical question: is “lovely” really a sufficient basis for referral, given the range and complexity of presentations seen in general practice?
In times of strain, the quiet work of care — for patients, colleagues, and ourselves — becomes both more difficult and more essential.
Public trust in doctors and health services is shifting slowly, but in the wrong direction in both Australia and the US. At the Australian Ethical Health Alliance (AEHA) symposium in May 2025, the message was clear, that as health professionals, we need to take swift action. As panellists speaking on the rise of misinformation and disinformation, we explored how trust has always been the ethical currency of medicine; however, once you start to spend it, everything else, including vaccination, screening, shared decision-making and even discharge planning to aged care, becomes harder.
The term ‘bikini medicine’ originally highlighted the narrow reproductive focus of women’s health research, but has since broadened into a much-needed campaign for equitable inclusion of women across all aspects of health care. Continued use of this patronising pejorative term may paradoxically diminish rather than augment the overall push for better women’s health. So it’s time to abandon the bikini and in the 21st century seek sex- and gender-specific medicine for the whole person.
A summary of the new Australian Guidelines for Assessment and Diagnosis of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder has been published in the Medical Journal of Australia.
