Menopause Awareness: The Balance Between Understanding and Alienation

Menopause symptoms, especially in the workplace, is a growing topic of interest, thanks to a lessening taboo. In an interview with Managed Healthcare Executive, Monica Christmas, M.D., director of the menopause program at the University of Chicago Medicine and the Center for Women’s Integrated Health talked about her struggles with hot flashes at work and why it’s important to raise awareness, but not so much that employers see menopause as a liability.

“Menopause symptoms can run the spectrum for many years, and in some cases, 10 or more,” Monica Christmas, M.D., director of the menopause program at the University of Chicago Medicine and the Center for Women’s Integrated Health said during an interview with Managed Healthcare Executive. “It's difficult because we want to make workplaces supportive, but we also don't want to alienate and ostracize or make it so that [employers] say, ‘I'm just not going to hire women of a certain age,’ or ‘they're not going to get promoted if they can't do the job,’ and that's not what we're saying at all there.”

As part of her job, Christmas does gynecological surgery. She shared some of her struggles with menopause at work, saying that she has had nurses strap ice packs to her neck and back while in the operating room. She used to practice obstetrics as well, but had to stop because she feared that her symptoms could impact her deliveries, although they never did.

“When I was still doing obstetrics and doing deliveries, the room needs to be a certain temperature, because the baby can't be cold. I can't say, ‘I'm having a hot flash, can you turn the temperature down and stop taking care of the mom and the baby and put an ice pack on my back?’” Christmas said. “It seems silly to say you stopped doing OB because you were hot, but I wasn’t just hot. I would be drenched walking out of there. My hair was wet, and I'd be wet down to my undergarments. I didn't have time to go take a shower.”