Page 122 - Shared Guideline Development Experiences in Fertility Care

Chapter 6
Introduction
e quality of fertility care is usually monitored by outcome measurements such as live birth rates [1]. However, high quality fertility care comprises more than just the e ectiveness of care. Regardless of medical-technical quality, patient- centredness described as ‘providing care that is respectful of and responsive to individual patient preferences, needs, and values and ensuring that patients’ values guide all clinical decisions’ also determines the quality of fertility care [2]. e multidimensional concept of patient-centredness comprises various aspects, such as the coordination and integration of care as well as the provision of emotional support [3, 4]. Recent reports have con rmed that infertile patients long for patient-centred care and that improvements in several dimensions of patient-centred fertility care could play a crucial role in deciding to drop out from fertility treatments [3-8]. Moreover, patient-centred fertility care is associated with increased patient satisfaction [6,9]. Regrettably, professionals are unable to adequately evaluate their performance regarding patient-centredness [10]. is hampers the direct quality improvement regarding patient-centredness. It also illustrates the need for measurable elements of practice performance derived from evidence-based guidelines regarding this quality of care dimension [11-13].
So far, several studies have reported on the development of guideline-based indicators within the eld of fertility care [14-16]. However, in these studies a particular focus on patient-centredness in fertility care is lacking. is could be because the involvement of patients in the guideline and indicator development process is still not common practice [17,18]. e development of guideline-based indicators for patient-centredness has only been reported within the eld of cancer care [19, 20]. Although patients played a minor role in these indicator development panels, the results suggest that including patients will lead to the identi cation of aspects of patient-centredness that may not have been considered previously. However, in these studies the exact di erence in choice of indicators between professionals and patients regarding patient-centredness remains unknown. erefore, as a rst step in improving and monitoring patient-centredness in fertility care, our aim was to get insight into what patients could add to the indicator development by developing two sets of guideline-based quality indicators for patient-centredness: one from the patients’ and one from the professionals’ perspective, and comparing the content of these two sets.
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