Undergraduate nursing textbook coverage of menopause

Abstract

Background: Menopause is a significant part of a woman’s life, it would be expected that nursing students would learn a considerable amount about the changes women go though during this time. The study purpose was to assess the amount of information regarding menopause covered in undergraduate nursing textbooks.

Methods: 128 electronic undergraduate nursing textbooks from one publisher were evaluated for menopause content in 11 areas and categorized as having no information (0), some information (1), or complete information (2). The word menopause was searched for each textbook.

Results: The number of search hits for the word menopause per textbook was most commonly 1, with 50% having fewer than 7 search hits, and an overall average of 14.02 hits per textbook (SD=15.15, range 1 to 60). The majority of textbooks had no or minimal information about menopause in each category.

Conclusions: There is minimal information on menopause in undergraduate nursing textbooks. This suggests that undergraduate nursing students may not be receiving the necessary information to adequately care for menopausal women.