Patient Perspectives on the Missed Opportunities and Barriers During the Diagnostic Journey: A Mixed Method Cross Sectional Study on Endometriosis in Australia

Kimia Sharifi Nasab, Kendall Foulds, Larissa Polkinghorne, Tracey Mclaren, Sophie Harris, Joanna Morris, Leo Ng, Emma Wise, Kevin Wernli
In: Women's Reproductive Health · 2026 · vol. 13(2) , pp. 521–538 · doi:10.1080/23293691.2025.2603690 · W7124464784
article OA: closed CC0
Full text JSON View on OpenAlex View at publisher
⚙ AI-generated summary by claude@2026-06, 2026-06-08 ⓘ

This mixed-methods study explored Australian patients' experiences, identifying missed opportunities and barriers throughout their endometriosis diagnostic journeys.

One-sentence paraphrase of the abstract; not a substitute for reading it. No clinical advice. How this works

Full text 2,382 characters · extracted from oa-doi-fallback · click to expand
Abstract Explore patient-reported barriers and missed opportunities across all domains of life during the endometriosis diagnostic process. A mixed methods crosssectional exploratory study using a co-designed online survey in people over 18 diagnosed with endometriosis via laparoscopy, residing in Australia. Quantitative data explored demographics, diagnosis, and care teams. Qualitative findings about missed opportunities and barriers were derived from free-text questions analyzed using deductive and inductive thematic analysis. Ninety-five participants completed the survey. The average time from symptom onset to diagnosis was 8.5 years. Findings highlighted patient invalidation and dismissal, poor understanding of endometriosis, missed opportunities for early holistic care, and self-advocacy. Acknowledgments We would like to acknowledge all participants for their participation in the study, and our allied health, general practitioner and gynaecology colleagues for supporting our study. We would also like to acknowledge Professor Anne Smith, Dr Nardia Klem, and Dr Beatriz Oliveira for their support and guidance. KW, JM, LN, and EW conceived the study. All authors were involved in the analysis and interpretation of data, drafting and revising the article, approved the final version and agreed to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved. Disclosure Statement All authors explicitly state that there are no conflicts of interest in connection with this study. Completed disclosure of interests form available to view online as supporting information. Ethics Statement Ethical approval for this project was obtained from the Curtin University Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC 2022-0412). Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) Generative AI (ChatGPT-4o) was used on the 16.04.2025 to help brainstorm keywords from the abstract. Data Availability Statement The authors confirm that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article or its supplementary materials. Any additional data are available from the corresponding author, KS, upon reasonable request. Correction Statement This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Text is read by the "Ask this paper" AI Q&A widget below. Extraction quality varies by source — PMC NXML preserves structure cleanly, OA-HTML may include some navigation residue, and OA-PDF can have broken hyphenation. The publisher copy (via DOI) is the canonical version.

My notes (saved in your browser only)

⚙ Ask this paper AI returns verbatim quotes from the full text · source: oa-doi-fallback ⓘ

Answers must be backed by verbatim quotes from this paper's full text. Hallucinated quotes are dropped automatically; if no verbatim passage answers the question, we say so. How this works

Condition tags

endometriosis

Citation neighborhood

Papers in the corpus that this work cites (lower rings, blue) and that cite this one (upper rings, green). Dot size scales with the paper's in-corpus citation count — bigger dot = more influential within the endo/adeno field. Click a dot to open that paper. [ expand to 2 hops ] — adds papers reached through this work's immediate citers/citees. Heavier; up to 60 extra dots.

References (27)

Source provenance

openalex
last seen: 2026-06-10T17:14:06.276822+00:00
License: CC0 · commercial use OK