The importance of infertility treatment on patients psychological well-being - recommendations for the Danish Public Healthcare System
Student thesis: Master Thesis and HD Thesis
- Tina Gram Jensen
- Katrine Filtenborg Lerche-Thomsen
- Maria Husted Pedersen
4. term, Public Health, Master (Master Programme)
Title: The importance of infertility treatment on patient’s psychological well-being - recom-mendations for the Danish Public Healthcare System
Initiating Problem: The prevalence of psychological problems in patients seeking infertility treatment is currently between 25-60%. Furthermore, patients with infertility challenges have a higher level of anxiety and depression which can cause psychological challenges for both the individual, couple and a potential future child. Despite that recent literature has found positive effect of psychosocial interventions alongside infertility treatment on numerous psychological outcomes, there seems to be no particular focus on the psychological well-being of patients undergoing infertility treatment in the Danish Public Healthcare System.
Aim: The aim is to understand the needs and challenges of patients receiving infertility treat-ment in Denmark and to present recommendations on how to improve the quality of infertility treatment within the Danish Public Healthcare System in order to promote patient’s psychologi-cal well-being.
Method: The project has its foundation in Gadamers exposition of the philosophical hermeneu-tics. Six semi-structured telephone interviews were conducted and then analysed using philo-sophical hermeneutics analysis based on the method of Dahlager & Fredslunds Furthermore, a systematic literature search was conducted.
Results: The philosophical hermeneutics analysis resulted in knowledge on the influence of infertility treatment on e.g. women's self-perception and everyday life. Findings from inter-views and systematic literature search contributed to the knowledge
in regards to activities, which have the potential to promote patients’ psychological well-being.
Conclusion: Infertility treatment can result in e.g. feelings of guilt, shame, and loss of control. The everyday life of patients can be challenging when undergoing infertility treatment and should therefore be taken into consideration. Based on the results of this project, six recom-mendations were developed in order to promote the psychological well-being of patients under-going infertility treatment and thereby improve the quality of the Danish Public Healthcare Sys-tem.
Language | Danish |
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Publication date | 1 Jun 2010 |
Number of pages | 159 |