Feedback from an infertile couple - what do IVF patients want from their clinic ?

We always ask our patients for complaints and compliments, so that we can improve our services. Here's some very thoughtful feedback we got from a patient recently.

" We have been married for 10 years. Both of us have flourishing careers, have a great family and friends around us. It’s just the longing to have a child of our own that makes our lives incomplete. It’s almost as if we have put the rest of our lives on hold for this. We started trying about 6 years ago, initially we thought it’s just a matter of time, it will happen. With no sign of success, we decided to take treatment. We had high hopes and we kept on trying. We followed the treatment prescribed by the doctors. We did 5 rounds of IUI’s and 4 IVFs at 2 different clinics – we had one successful IVF which turned out to be a chemical pregnancy. Things just didn’t seem right so we decided to take a step back and think about our options.

We realized that we kept on going in spite to being unhappy with the level of attention we received from the doctors and clinics we had visited. The thought of giving up crossed our minds more than once… But the urge of having a baby of our own kept us going.

We decided to look for other doctors who would treat us as a human being rather than some number on a file or a statistic for their records. While researching we came across Dr.Malpani’s website, it was very informative and helpful. We decided to give ourselves another chance and sent Dr.Malpani an email. To our surprise, he responded in few hours which was a pleasant surprise. Up until that time, we always had a tough time reaching doctors. After few email exchanges, we met Dr.Malpani in person and decided to go through IVF one more time. For me, this 5^th IVF cycle was the most comfortable one. On earlier occasions the procedures were very painful and stressful. Although this procedure was done in another town, yet it was very well organized and managed . Unfortunately we didn’t get a positive result but that shouldn’t take anything away from the doctors and the clinic staff. It just wasn’t meant to be. We were totally satisfied with the way the treatment as handled. Luckily for us, we had decided to freeze the supernumerary embryos. We have snow babies and will try again when we are ready.

In our opinion, Infertility is the toughest test for any couple no matter who they are. It’s a long, hard journey. For all of those people out there who are going through this, we would like to say only one thing – each one of you deserves to be treated like a human. No one deserves to be pushed around and you must not accept sub-standard level of treatment, there is a better clinic out there.

Since we had visited 2 other clinics before going to the Malpani clinic, we would like to compare the treatment we received at the other 2 clinics versus at Malpani clinic on the following factors – (Scale – 1 worst; 5 best)"

Note – Cost is comparable at both clinics

Parameter	Malpani Clinic	Other Clinic
Accessibility to Main Doctor	5	2
Attention from Doctor	5 (Dr.Malpani is always available to answer any queries)	1 (Had to go through a bunch of junior doctors, main doctor would hardly spend few mins with the patient)
Transparency	5 (Gave inputs on all aspects of treatment & photos of embryos)	1 (Lack of transparency & doctor got offended when we asked questions)
Waiting time at clinic	4 (Only waiting time was for sonography but that wasn’t unreasonable)	1 (Horrible experience, on most occasions had to wait for hours to meet the doctor)
Technology	4	2
Post procedure – Follow up	5 (Dr.Malpani was very reachable even after our failed IVF cycle)	1 (Doctors weren’t reachable after failed IVF cycle. This is the time when patients need to talk to the doctor)
Staff	5 (Very helpful and cordial staff)	2 (Negligent and unfriendly staff)
Mode of payment	5 Any (Cheques, Cash, Credit Card)	3 Cash + Credit Card (Paying some amount in Cash was compulsory – this causes hassle for some patients)