Top Ten Tips for Avoiding Medical Mistakes, Errors, and Mix Ups in Infertility Treatment |
- Is your doctor a member of the American Medical Association and
board certified in an area of specialty
that relates to infertility.
- Is the embryology lab accredited by either the College of
American Pathologists (CAP) or the Joint Commission, a voluntary
accreditation program for hospitals and other health care
organizations? You can find this information by asking
the clinic and it is also on the Center for Disease Control
statistics table for each clinic.
- Is the clinic a member of the Society of Assisted Reproductive
Technology? Membership is voluntary and SART has very limited
enforcement authority, but membership is at least an indication
that the clinic will follow the SART guidelines for practice.
You can find this information by asking the clinic and it is also
on the Center for Disease Control
statistics table for each clinic.
- Check the Center for
Disease Control statistics on the clinic to see not only their
pregnancy rate, but also their live birth rate, and multiple birth
rate. Triplet and more pregnancies are another form of IVF
mistake.
- Ask the clinic about their labeling protocol for sperm, eggs,
and embryos? (They should use at least two, and preferably
more, unique identifiers such as bar-coding, color-coding, name,
number, etc.)
- Ask the clinic what safeguards are used to make sure that the
correct eggs, sperm and embryos are used for each procedure?
(For example, more than one person doing the identification of both
the embryo or gamete and the patient, multiple times for comparing
patients identification with the gamete or embryo, handing off
sperm sample to the person in the lab who will be processing it
rather than to a secretary or assistant, etc.)
- Check to see if there have been any complaints or disciplinary
actions against your doctor. You have a couple of options:
- Search “medical board” and the state name in your
favorite search engine to find the Medical Board for your
state.
- Use a commercial service, such as HealthGrades to provide a report
on your doctor.
- Ask the clinic if a nurse is available to work with you
individually if needed to make certain you understand how to
administer the medication? Not all mistakes in infertility
treatment are by the clinic itself. Infertility medications
can be confusing to administer.
- Does the clinic have a specific policy of disclosing all
mistakes or errors to a patient?
- During your procedure, ask questions. It’s OK to
appear paranoid. Have you double checked to make sure these
are my embryos? May I see the storage vial for the sperm
before or after insemination?
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