General practitioners "are often very busy and may not have time to give the 20 to 30 minutes needed to every woman who inquires about the menopause", a GP involved in campaigning on women's health said yesterday.
Dr Sylvester Mooney was speaking at the publication of two guides to the menopause - one for women, one for GPs - co-published by the Saffron Initiative and Irish College of General Practitioners.
The Saffron Initiative is a non-profit project aimed at developing and providing straightforward health information for older women.
The guides, Guide To The Menopause and General Practice Guide To The Menopause, follow a survey of 1,300 older women last year by Saffron, the department of health economics at UCD and the ESRI.
The survey found 63 per cent of the women got their information on health issues from newspapers, magazines, books, radio or TV, though 74.5 per cent would prefer to get information from their GPs.
"From personal experience I know that if I have a good leaflet such as this to hand to the patient at the end of a consultation, it is like a record of that consultation," Dr Mooney said.
