Abstract
A Japanese non-profit organization Fertility Information Network (FINE), chaired by the author, conducted a survey in a form of questionnaire on how infertility patients select clinics. FINE is a self-support group of people with experience of infertility and operates in various areas to create a better environment for infertility health-care.
Medical institutions are the places where people as “patients” seek treatments of their physical and mental disorders. Since the patients’ purpose is simply the improvement of the disorder; they find another similar facility and start going there as a new patient if their conditions do not improve. The question then, what about treatments using assisted reproductive technology (ART).
In Japan, the number of infertility clinics which are capable of providing ART such as in-vitro fertilization is 586, which is the most for one country. Perhaps as a result of the extensive choices, infertility patients are said to change clinics or doctors more often. When the ultimate purpose of patients is to get pregnant and eventually give birth to a baby, it is not hard to anticipate that they change clinics when they do not conceive. However, the questions remain regarding the genuine reasons of their changing clinics. This paper analyzes the “points of clinic selections” to find out whether the infertility patients change clinics only because their physical disorder do not improve, or if there are any mental aspects that affect their choices..
