Choosing Doctors

Abstract

Patients struggle with how to pick doctors, wanting success and patient-centered care but often facing difficulties assessing and weighing these qualities. Many patients feel dissatisfied and disappointed and grapple with how to gauge and weigh communication against technical skills, success rates, financial resources, and hope—whether to shop around and, if so, how much and how to decide. Providers generally receive little, if any, training on how best to address the difficult emotions, profound uncertainties, and complex statistics involved with assisted reproductive technologies. After treatment failures, many patients consult more than one physician and/or seek more holistic, patient-centered approaches, including unproven, alternative approaches.