9 tips for advocating for your health needs – and Erin’s heartbreaking story

Grace explores nine practical, expert-backed tips to help women and gender-diverse people advocate for themselves in a medical system that often doesn’t listen. From “fire your doctor” to “understand your patient rights” — these tried-and-tested practical strategies could make all the difference.

Plus: Grace hears how Erin, who lives with Hashimoto’s disease, kept advocating for herself in a medical system that didn’t seem to be listening — even after her pregnancy ended in tragedy.

CONTENT WARNING: This episode contains descriptions of stillbirth, birth trauma, and medical trauma.

Guests:

• Dr Pav Nanayakkara, a gynaecologist working at Jean Hailes for Women's Health and operating at Epworth Freemasons in Melbourne
• Dr Jane Hutchens, a researcher at the Insight Research Institute at the University of Technology Sydney
• Erin, who has Hashimoto’s disease and tragically lost her unborn son following abnormalities in her pregnancy bloodwork that, she says, weren’t thoroughly investigated
• Dr Alex Dunn, who saw four GPs before being diagnosed with a cancerous kidney tumour 

Resources for this episode:

“Women wait for endometriosis diagnosis with multiple symptoms,” Dr Dereje Gete  et al, 2023.

“Large-scale characterization of gender differences in diagnosis prevalence and time to diagnosis,” Tony Yue Sun, 2023.

Australian Charter of Healthcare Rights, 2008 (updated in 2019).

“Is self-advocacy universally achievable for patients? The experiences of Australian women with cardiac disease in pregnancy and postpartum,” Dr Jane Hutchens et al, 2023.