Royal College of General Practitioners - Online Learning Environment

Available until 17 December 2025.

GPs are the first port of call for women’s health issues. We manage the majority of them without recourse to secondary care, even though the amount of time that medical school and vocational training devotes to subjects such as contraception and the menopause can be variable. When we do refer, our patients wait for many months or years, during which we manage symptoms and answer our patients’ questions. 

In this One Day Essentials conference, Dr Toni Hazell and a group of leading speakers will focus on essential information, latest evidence, practical tips and take-home messages to help improve practice and patient outcomes. The primary care perspective will be foremost in all of the talks, with consideration of the real-life decisions that we make every day whilst working in an under-resourced system. There will be ample opportunity for questions. 

Learning Objectives:

• To gain confidence in the management of women’s health issues in primary care, and knowledge of when referral is appropriate. 
• To understand the updated NICE guideline on menopause and how to explain complex issues of risks and benefits to women contemplating HRT, as well as being aware of the British Menopause Society guidance on unscheduled bleeding on HRT and how this might affect your referral decisions. 
• To understand how to manage suspected endometriosis in primary care and how decisions on referral should be individualised depending on factors such as symptom severity and desire to conceive. 
• To be updated on contraception and the latest thinking in PCOS. 
• To be aware of the NICE guidelines on familial cancer risk and know how to manage a patient who presents with concerns about genetic risks of cancer. 
• To be able to talk to women holistically throughout their life and give sensible advice when asked about lifestyle and complementary medicine.  

Topics include:

• Menopause update: What NICE did and did not say in 2024?
• Bleeding on HRT
• Contraception cluedo: Update your contraceptive knowledge for 2025
• Endometriosis
• Familial cancer
• PCOS 
• Holistic women's health throughout the life cycle 

Conference chair

Dr Toni Hazell, GP and RCGP eLearning fellow