Dysmenorrhea affects women of all ages, especially young women. As a society, we often tend to write off painful menstruation as a normal part of aging. However, as providers, we know the symptoms of dysmenorrhea often fall outside the scope of normal. Endometriosis is one of the most common causes of dysmenorrhea and yet often goes undiagnosed or improperly treated. The ability for appropriate evaluation, diagnosis, referral, and treatment is dependent on a provider's experience and training, which begins in residency. We believe that a lack of exposure and understanding of endometriosis in adolescents leads to discomfort with the topic and therefore missed diagnoses. We believe direct clinical and surgical training from a Pediatric and Adolescent Gynecologist (PAG) plays an impactful role on the education of residents and their comfort in proper evaluation, diagnosis, referral, and treatment of adolescent endometriosis.

This study will be performed by conducting an anonymous survey that will be distributed to OBGYN residents in the United States using the residency database. The survey will include questions regarding their approach to the adolescent patient with dysmenorrhea, their comfort level with the evaluation process, at what point they would consider referral, if they train under a PAG attending, and the depth of that training. The data will collected and stored in a password-protected HIPAA-compliant REDCap database on secure OU Health servers for analysis.

Data collection for this project will begin in Fall 2026.