Onm-9: The Patient Centeredness As The Most Important Missing Dimension of High Quality Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART

Traditionally, the quality of fertility care is defined by outcome measures such as live birth or complication rate. Nowadays, patient centeredness in healthcare is receiving more attention and patient evaluation of sub fertility care is being given more consideration as an important treatment outcome. High quality ART covers all six dimensions of high quality care, including safety, effectiveness, patient centeredness, timeliness, efficiency, and equity of access. The most important dimension of high quality care is patient centeredness. Patient centered care is described as healthcare that respects the individuality, values, ethnicity, social endowments and information needs of each patient. It focuses on the patients’ experience of illness and healthcare. The main significance of patient centeredness is that it moves the health care focus away from the disorder and toward the patient. It is well known that doctors and patients often differ in the aspects of care they consider important. Patient are more worried about psychological and social issues, whereas doctors are inclined to focus on the more technical and physical aspects of care and disease. However, Patient centeredness does not mean simply complying with all of the patients requests. Meeting the patients needs and preferences is valuable, but not at any price. The patient centeredness will bring patients many benefits: It enables them to be heard and their concerns and expectations to be addressed and they gain a positive care experience. As emotional stress is one of the main reasons for couples to dropout of fertility treatment, the improvement of patient centeredness of care could be very important in decreasing high dropout rates in clinics. Investing for improvement the patients’ experiences with care could also remove some of the physical and emotional burden of fertility treatments. Finally, improving patient centeredness of care might also have a positive impact on the job satisfaction of the medical staff such as nurses and physicians. So infertile couples would particularly benefit from care tailored to their individual needs and delivery of patient-centered fertility care is important. A reliable and valid instrument is now available for measuring the patient centeredness; therefore this outcome could be positioned next to other quality measures in fertility care, such as pregnancy rates and frequency of multiples. These measures together can guide fertility care organizations to adopt holistic approaches to improve their services.