Reproductive health counselor

Reproductive health consultants are professional service personnel recognized by the National Health Commission who provide reproductive health science popularization, risk assessment, medical guidance and daily intervention guidance to people of all ages - they are not medical consultants in private hospitals, they are not sellers of personal care products, and they are not bloggers who create marginal content. They are fill-in-the-blank roles that fill the gap between school sex education and clinical medical services.

Last Wednesday, I received a consultation call from a girl who was hiding in the corner of the bookstore. She was a girl in the second year of high school. She cried and said that she had not had her period for two months and was afraid to tell her mother for fear of being questioned about whether she had a puppy love. When I searched online, I saw someone saying that she might have a tumor and needed surgery. I was so scared that I couldn't sleep for a whole week. Don't think that this kind of thing is rare. I have been in this business for 5 years, and 80% of the consultations I have encountered with minors are because they dare not ask their parents, cannot find formal information channels, and make blind guesses on their own.

At present, the industry has not yet formed a completely unified consensus on the boundaries of our functions. Both groups of people have their own reasons: one group is consultants who have transferred from clinical practice. They insist that we cannot give any medical advice and can only provide information sorting and medical guidance. For example, the little girl just now, I can help her sort out whether she has stayed up late recently or has experienced a sudden increase or decrease in weight, and teach her how to tell her mother, "I don't want to have my period, so I want to go to the hospital to check." We must not recommend any menstruation-regulating drugs or health care products to her; the other group is a consultant with a background in public health. They feel that our core role is to eliminate information gaps and do not need to be limited to the box of "only guiding medical treatment." For example, we go into the community to tell the elderly that atrophic vaginitis is not a "normal phenomenon of old age", and tell postpartum mothers that urine leakage can be improved through Kegel exercises. These science popularizations that do not involve medical procedures are originally our scope of responsibilities. The two directions are still adjusting. There is no right or wrong, it's just that the service scenarios they adapt to are different.

Oh, by the way, I met a consultant who left a deep impression on me when I first entered the industry. She was a 62-year-old aunt. When she came, she was holding a wrinkled cloth bag, which contained half a bag of personal care lotion and folk ointments that were said to be "anti-inflammatory and sterilizing." Before I came up, I gave her some professional knowledge. I first showed her my grandma’s previous medical records and told her that my grandma also suffered from atrophic vaginitis when she was in her 70s. So she went to the hospital and prescribed an ointment that cost dozens of dollars. After applying it for two weeks, she was cured. She burst into tears at that time, saying that finally no one thought she was "old and disrespectful" anymore. Later, she went to the hospital for a check-up. It was a common bacterial imbalance caused by a decrease in estrogen. She took the medicine as prescribed by the doctor. Later, she specially brought a bag of dried sweet potatoes that she had dried to thank me.

Of course, this does not mean that this industry is now very standardized. If you search for "reproductive health consultant" now, nine out of ten ads that pop up will be recruitment advertisements for "taking a certificate and earning more than 10,000 yuan a month." Many people spend hundreds of dollars to buy a training certificate with no gold content, and then turn around and dare to In the circle of friends, "vaginal reduction gel" and "ovary maintenance essential oil" are sold, which has created a good professional reputation. For those of us who are serious about providing services, sometimes when we say that we are reproductive health consultants, the first reaction of the other party is "Are you trying to sell me something?", which is quite helpless.

Speaking of which, many people think that all we deal with are adults’ privacy issues. This is not true. Last month, a boy who just entered college came to consult and said that he felt very guilty when he had a wet dream. He was afraid of being discovered by his roommates, so he didn’t even dare to wash his underwear in a public washing machine. After half a month of hard work, he almost lost sleep. Don't laugh, there are really many people who have lived for more than ten years without even having knowledge of the most basic knowledge of reproductive health. Parents are embarrassed to tell them, and schools are very secretive about it. If something happens, they can only search for those messy online posts. The more they read, the more scared they become.

Last week I also received a WeChat message from the little girl who was a sophomore in high school, saying that her mother took her to get checked out. It was due to the stress of preparing for the exam and the hormone imbalance caused by drinking iced milk tea every day. Progesterone came back after a few days of taking it. She also said that she would apply for preventive medicine in the college entrance examination and that she would do this after graduation. You see, in fact, what we do is not that big of a deal. We just build a small bridge for those who are too embarrassed to speak out and can't find the right path. We can help everyone.