![[WEBINAR RECORDING] Women and Parkinson’s Panel: Choosing Your Care Team and Gender Disparities in Research and Care](https://davisphinneyfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/dpf_favicon-1.png "[WEBINAR RECORDING] Women and Parkinson’s Panel: Choosing Your Care Team and Gender Disparities in Research and Care")
[WEBINAR RECORDING] Women and Parkinson’s Panel: Choosing Your Care Team and Gender Disparities in Research and Care
Description
Does it help women with Parkinson’s to receive their neurological care from a woman? In this video, Director of Education and Content Devon Fulford discusses this topic with members of the Davis Phinney Foundation’s women’s panel.
The panel also talks more broadly about the importance of choosing your care providers and about why it’s both surprising and not surprising that women with Parkinson’s are underrepresented in research but prominent in Parkinson’s advocacy and support groups.
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Some panelists prioritize having female neurologists and care team members as much as possible, but others have made this less of a priority. Still, there is a sense amongst the panelists that there are advantages to seeing a female provider.
Teri summarizes this: “I have had a lot of luck with [providers who are] women just being more receptive, and I am just kind of more open and willing to kind of lead with the idea that my hormones play into [my symptoms].”
While the panel doesn’t come to the conclusion that their care is always better when they see a female neurologist, they do share a similar view of traits shared by the best providers they have seen.
Providers the panelists most prefer to see are those who:
- Listen carefully
- Take all concerns seriously, even when they’ve not heard them before
- Are willing to work with their patients as partners
- Have interest in maintaining care relationships for extended timeframes
Women With Parkinson’s: The Impact of Menstruation
One factor to the quality of the panelists’ experiences as women with Parkinson’s is the impact of their menstrual cycles on their symptoms, and the way this relates to the character of the attention they receive from providers.
The panelists describe differing experiences of menstruation on their symptoms. For some, their periods coincide with a decreased intensity of symptoms. Others have the opposite experience.
Research Involving Women with Parkinson’s
The difference in how menstruation influences symptoms highlights one big problem with the limited research on women’s health and Parkinson’s. In 2019, Cerri et al. stated that research “considering female sex as a crucial variable [… is] highly under-represented” in Parkinson’s research.
Considering the variability of experiences of Parkinson’s, it is not surprising that we don’t understand the precise impacts of menstruation, menopause, pregnancy, and other aspects o
United States
