Doctors Not Comfortable Treating Female Sexual Problems

When a patient consults a doctor for a health problem, he or she believes the doctor is capable of identifying and treating it effectively.

But the women we see in our Center for Sexual Medicine tell a different story. Many of them complain about their doctor's lack of responsiveness to their sexual problem. A new study shows that theirs are not isolated experiences.

To try to better understand the magnitude of this problem, researchers surveyed 1,946 physicians who attended the annual meetings of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the Endocrine Society, the North American Menopause Society, and the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. The survey asked doctors to estimate the prevalence of female sexual dysfunction (FSD) and their ability to address these problems in their patients.
Of the physicians who responded to the survey, most felt that FSD was very common in their practices: 48 percent reported that one-quarter to one-half of their patients had FSD; 36 percent said one-quarter or less of their patients had FSD; and 16 percent said that over one-half of their patients had the condition. Desire disorders were considered by far the most prevalent, with arousal, orgasmic and pain disorders roughly equivalent in occurrence.

However, when doctors were asked to rate their level of knowledge of FSD, about 61 percent rated their knowledge as "fair" or "poor." When asked to rate the quality of current treatments for FSD, 41 percent rated them as "fair" and 45 percent as "poor."These results explain what many women experience when they try to get help for their sexual problem from their doctor.

Many physicians have limited knowledge of female sexual dysfunctions. They are reluctant to address them in practice because they feel their knowledge about them is incomplete. And they do not have a lot of faith in the current treatments available.