When you're not believed: chronic UTI, advocacy and medical misogyny

Yes, I agree, and I think that it is unusual to have GPs that are interested, not just in specialized areas, but in specialized areas that where there are still questions hanging and aren't f- fully explained.

So most people that are attracted into general practice will actually have these days a very fixed work pattern, whereby they're working within very defined guidelines, and they have to cover a heck of a lot of areas.

I mean, anything can walk through your door when you're a GP.

Mm.

You are a generalist, and so it's, it's a case of knowing a little bit about an awful lot- And very little in great detail.

Mm.

But then again, GP is the one job where you can specialize in certain areas.

So one would think that we would be recruiting more doctors that are experienced in, in narrowed areas.

And indeed, there are quite a lot that are experienced in women's health.

Mm.

But then very few seem to want to get experienced in this area that we're talking about today, in persistently recurrent or chronic UTIs.

Now, I think that's partly because it's not actually a fully recognized condition.

So we recognize flash in the pan acute UTI.

Mm-hmm.

We recognize recurrent UTI, and we have medical definitions for those two.

But we do not recognize the condition where the recurrences are so often that they're almost joined together or they are actually joined together, and there's no gaps between episodes.

And it actually evolves into a completely different beast-

Mm

...

when it becomes like that.

And what is needed in those situations are better testing and better treatment pathways.

But to achieve that, we need to actually get a proper medical definition for chronic UTI.

But that is a work in progress that we are involved in already.

But I think it's a l- why it's weird for general practitioners is this is usually an area that is left for the hospital doctors who are more involved in research.

But then maybe they're so specialized in their little areas, they haven't got that thinking outside of the box, that greater overview, and so they're not, they're, they're not seeing the wood for trees.