Women's health as a multidisciplinary specialty: an exploratory proposal

The purpose of this paper is to encourage the development of women's health as a multidisciplinary specialty. The idea for such a specialty arose from the grass roots women's health movement of the 1960s, whose tenets were rapidly embraced by physicians sympathetic to its ideals, especially members of the American Medical Women's Association. Women's health would be a multidisciplinary specialty offering service to a specific patient population, analogous to geriatric medicine. It would blend primary care, ambulatory obstetrics-gynecology, and psychiatry with additional training in endocrinology, nutrition, sports medicine, and orthopaedics. Suggestions for residency training and specialty certification are included.