Most OBGYNs Have No Formal Training in Menopause. That’s Why It’s Hard to Find Good Care.
Women in menopause often spend years seeing multiple doctors before getting a diagnosis or effective treatment. That experience, which many dismiss as individual bad luck, reflects a structural problem: most physicians, including most gynecologists, never received formal training on menopause.
A study in the Journal of the Menopause Society found that fewer than one-third of obstetrics and gynecology residency program directors said their programs included menopause training. The doctors treating women through one of the most significant biological transitions of their lives largely learned to do so on their own, or not at all.
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Hormone replacement therapy remains the most evidence-supported treatment for menopause symptoms, but it is still widely under-prescribed. The hesitancy traces in large part to a 2002 study that appeared to link HRT to elevated breast cancer risk. Follow-up research has significantly complicated and, for most women, walked back those findings, but the clinical culture shifted and never fully recovered.
The knowledge gap extends beyond HRT. Hot flashes, night sweats, brain fog, joint pain, and mood changes are among the most commonly reported menopause symptoms, but they are frequently mistaken for anxiety, depression, or normal aging and treated accordingly, or not treated at all. Patients report being told their symptoms are stress-related, referred to psychiatrists, or dismissed entirely.
The pipeline problem starts in medical school. Menopause receives minimal attention in most curricula, and residency programs have not made up for that deficit. The result is that providers entering practice lack basic fluency in what their patients are experiencing, what options exist, and which patients are and aren’t good candidates for treatment.
New FDA guidance has aimed to ease some prescribing barriers, and a growing number of medical organizations are pushing for standardized menopause education at the residency level. California Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed menopause care legislation twice, in 2023 and 2024, before facing public pushback, including from Halle Berry, who called him out by name at a New York Times conference. The bills would have expanded insurance coverage for menopause evaluation and required medical training on the topic.
For now, women navigating perimenopause and menopause are largely on their own in finding providers with real expertise. The Menopause Society maintains a directory of certified practitioners. That directory exists, in part, because the standard of care does not reliably provide them.
Source: USA Today, November 2025; Journal of the Menopause Society. Based on a survey of obstetrics and gynecology residency program directors on menopause training in residency programs.