Dr Pauline Williams, an Aberdeen GP, has been awarded a National Research Scotland (NRS) fellowship. This will allow her to dedicate one day per week to research while continuing to work as GP.
We asked Dr Williams what this means to her. Here is what she said: “I’m really excited to have been awarded this fellowship. I’m interested in the five main gynaecological cancers; ovarian; cervical; endometrial; vulval and vaginal. Too many women are dying from gynaecological cancer in Scotland. We think that embarrassment might be one of the reasons for this. We can be embarrassed to talk about gynaecological cancers or the symptoms that they cause and this might lead some women to delay going to their doctor when they have symptoms.
I will be speaking to women who have been diagnosed with a gynaecological cancer to ask them
- what they did before they were diagnosed;
- when did they realise something was wrong;
- what made them go to their doctor;
- did having gynaecological symptoms make them think differently about going to the doctor?
I hope to use the information I get to find ways of making it as easy as possible for women to go to their doctors as early as possible which will hopefully see fewer women dying from these cancers.