TY - JOUR
T1 - Counsellors’ practices in donor sperm treatment
AU - Visser, M.
AU - Gerrits, T.
AU - van der Veen, F.
AU - Mochtar, M.
PY - 2019
Y1 - 2019
N2 - When intended parents choose to have donor sperm treatment (DST), this may entail wide-ranging and long-lasting psychosocial implications related to the social parent not having a genetic tie with the child, how to disclose donor-conception and future donor contact. Counselling by qualified professionals is recommended to help intended parents cope with these implications. The objective of this study is to present findings and insights about how counsellors execute their counselling practices. We performed a qualitative study that included 13 counsellors working in the 11 clinics offering DST in the Netherlands. We held a focus group discussion and individual face-to-face semi-structured interviews, which were fully transcribed and analysed using thematic analysis. The counsellors combined screening for eligibility and guidance within one session. They acted according to their individual knowledge and clinical experience and had different opinions on the issues they discussed with intended parents, which resulted in large practice variations. The counsellors were dependent on the admission policies of the clinics, which were mainly limited to regulating access to psychosocial counselling, which also lead to a variety of counselling practices. This means that evidence-based guidelines on counselling in DST need to be developed to provide consistent counselling with less practice variation.
AB - When intended parents choose to have donor sperm treatment (DST), this may entail wide-ranging and long-lasting psychosocial implications related to the social parent not having a genetic tie with the child, how to disclose donor-conception and future donor contact. Counselling by qualified professionals is recommended to help intended parents cope with these implications. The objective of this study is to present findings and insights about how counsellors execute their counselling practices. We performed a qualitative study that included 13 counsellors working in the 11 clinics offering DST in the Netherlands. We held a focus group discussion and individual face-to-face semi-structured interviews, which were fully transcribed and analysed using thematic analysis. The counsellors combined screening for eligibility and guidance within one session. They acted according to their individual knowledge and clinical experience and had different opinions on the issues they discussed with intended parents, which resulted in large practice variations. The counsellors were dependent on the admission policies of the clinics, which were mainly limited to regulating access to psychosocial counselling, which also lead to a variety of counselling practices. This means that evidence-based guidelines on counselling in DST need to be developed to provide consistent counselling with less practice variation.
UR - https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?partnerID=HzOxMe3b&scp=85043695811&origin=inward
UR - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29534622
U2 - https://doi.org/10.1080/14647273.2018.1449970
DO - https://doi.org/10.1080/14647273.2018.1449970
M3 - Article
C2 - 29534622
SN - 1464-7273
VL - 22
SP - 255
EP - 265
JO - Human Fertility
JF - Human Fertility
IS - 4
ER -