Women's health: professional resources
All nurses and midwives are encouraged to develop skills and knowledge to enhance best practice, and provide advice and appropriate support to women during their lifespan.
This page provides links to organisations and resources which will support nurses and midwives working in women's health.
Organisations
Key resources
Bailey, R. (2022) Identifying and supporting women and girls at risk of, or experiencing, violence and abuse primary health care journal.
Department of Health and Social Care. Chief Medical Officer annual report 2014: women’s health
Guidelines for nurses. Women's health. Guideline summaries and featured articles on women's health.
Health in Wales (2020) Woman’s Health and NHS Wales Health Collaborative.
Independent Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Review (2020). The Cumberlege Report. First do no harm. This report reviews Primodos, sodium valproate and pelvic mesh.
- Primodos - hormone pregnancy tests (HPTs) – tests, such as Primodos, which were withdrawn from the market in the late 1970s and which are thought to be associated with birth defects and miscarriages
- sodium valproate – an effective anti-epileptic drug which causes physical malformations, autism and developmental delay in many children when it is taken by their mothers during pregnancy; and
- pelvic mesh implants – used in the surgical repair of pelvic organ prolapse and to manage stress urinary incontinence. Its use has been linked to crippling, life- changing, complications
Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) (2011) High Quality Women’s Health Care. This report looks at how NHS women’s health services could be configured to provide high-quality, safe and timely care.
RCOG. Better for women report: Improving the health and wellbeing of girls and women - In December 2019 The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists launched their strategy. This report identifies simple and cost-effective solutions to prevent girls and women falling through the cracks of our health systems.
RCOG (2018). Women’s Health Taskforce for England is launched.
Scottish Government (2019-2020) Women’s Health Group.
Specialist Pharmacy Service. Reproductive Health Patient Group Direction (PGD) Templates. SPS and the Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Health (FSRH), with the support of specialist stakeholders working within clinical practice, have produced PGD templates for medicines commonly used within reproductive services.
University of Warwick. Sexual and Reproductive Health Behavioural Intervention Toolkit.
Work Foundation (2017) More than “women’s issues” Women’s reproductive and gynaecological health and work. By focusing on 4 major issues: endometriosis, infertility, pregnancy, and menopause, this paper sheds light on these less-talked-about factors of female reproductive and gynaecological health which present challenges to working.
International resources
The Lancet (2015) Women and Health: the key for sustainable development. Girls' and women's health is in transition and, although some aspects of it have improved substantially in the past few decades, there are still important unmet needs.
United Nations (2016) Sustainable development-goals. “On 1 January 2016, the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development — adopted by world leaders in September 2015 came into force. Over the next fifteen years, with these new Goals that universally apply to all, countries will mobilize efforts to end all forms of poverty, fight inequalities and tackle climate change, while ensuring that no one is left behind.”
World Health Organization (WHO) Global Health Observatory (GHO) data - Women and Health
WHO (2021) Women's health
