The menopausal hot flash: a procrustean bed of research

There are several scientific researchers from a variety of academic disciplines investigating the menopausal hot flash (MHF). Synthesis of all MHF research findings results in contradictory and inconclusive information available to health care providers and perimenopausal women. This study used epistemological construction and hermenuetical understanding to explore this information problem. Specific MHF exemplars, the problem-solutions, were constructed from extant scientific literature; two models of health guiding MHF research were generated from these exemplars. These models, health as a shared and communicable experience and health as a medical-physiological concept, provided a focus for hermeneutical understanding of the MHF information problem. Cooperative-collaborative inquiry was proposed as an approach for future MHF research.