PATIENTS INVOLVED IN CLINIC’S NEW FORUM WILL HAVE A VOICE IN FERTILITY SERVICE DELIVERY

A leading South West fertility clinic is launching a patient forum aimed at giving women and couples currently undergoing treatment the chance to give detailed personal feedback to the people responsible for their care.

The team at Bristol Centre for Reproductive Medicine (BCRM), which is based at Aztec West, has invited every patient treated in their new premises since it opened at the beginning of 2022 to be involved in the new ‘Voices’ forum which will meet for the first time early in the New Year.

The group is the brainchild of Senior Clinical Embryologist Jen Nisbett who says she is a ‘huge advocate’ of actively engaging with patients to ensure they are given the best possible patient experience.

Jen Nisbett said: “Because fertility can be impacted by an individual’s mental state as well as their physiology it’s in everyone’s best interests for us to be aware of all aspects of the patient experience and we’re really hoping the Voices forum will provide some useful revelations.

“It will not involve any discussion of confidential aspects of treatment, nor is it intended to be a support group. What it will be is a focus group that enables participants to inform the way we develop our service so that patients remain at the heart of what we do.

“We believe patients views’ should be central to the decisions the clinic makes – they are what our service is all about, so it makes sense that their contributions should shape decisions about how BCRM’s fertility treatments are delivered.

“We always encourage feedback throughout treatment, but this new group will enable patients to offer their perspective at the planning stages for things we would like to do, or things we're proposing to change. 

”We’re also developing quick and simple electronic questionnaires to capture real-time patient experience at every point of the patient journey, so it will make sense for feedback from these to be anonymously shared with the Voices group. 

“Just because we are experts in fertility treatment, that doesn’t guarantee there won’t be any issues impacting on those at the receiving end that we may possibly fail to have on our radar. And if there are, this group will enable us to learn about them and act on them.”

The Voices forum is expected to meet quarterly, adopting a relaxed conversational context that the organisers hope will prompt people to share their thoughts on aspects of patient care which BCRM might be handle differently, or better. The clinic will share the resultant outcomes with all patients.

BCRM www.fertilitybristol.com is the longest established fertility clinic in Bristol, helping people from throughout the South West and Wales with fertility treatment for both private and NHS patients. The clinic is involved in innovative research and has one of the best success rates with IVF and other fertility treatments in the UK.