Patient-centered infertility care from an Arab perspective: A review study

• Published in: Middle East Fertility Society journal Vol. 23; no. 1; pp. 8 - 13
• Main Authors: Webair, Hana Hasan, Ismail, Tengku Alina Tengku, Ismail, Shaiful Bahari
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier B.V 01.03.2018; SpringerOpen
• Subjects: Arab; Infertility; Patient-centered care; Satisfaction; Arab; Infertility; Patient-centered care; Satisfaction
• ISSN: 1110-5690
• DOI: 10.1016/j.mefs.2017.10.003

Patient-centeredness was listed as the sixth quality element by the Institute of Medicine in 2001. Cultural differences should be acknowledged when defining patient-centeredness. Although there are numerous sources of literature that studied patient-centered infertility care, few include members of the Arab population. This review aims to answer two questions: What do Arab patients prefer, value, and expect from infertility medical care? How was patient-centered infertility care studied in Arab patients? A systematic search was conducted on seven electronic databases published up until March 2017. Studies evaluated the infertile patients' preferences and expectations concerning infertility care. Participants were Arab patients who sought care for infertility. The outcome was patient-centered infertility care. The reviewers carried out data extraction of specific outcomes and evaluated each study using the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool. A total of 629 citations were identified. However, only 6 were eligible for analysis. All studies were monocentric. All but one of them were quantitative. The patient-centered care outcome measures in most of the studies were respect for patients’ preferences and/or physical comfort concerning a specified diagnostic or therapeutic intervention. Only one study explored patients’ experiences and found that emotional support, information, communication, education, and coordination and integration of care were appreciated dimensions. We found that no study comprehensively described what infertile Arab couples prefer, need, and value. A contributing factor to this conclusion may be in the methodologies used. Further studies are needed to adequately answer the research questions.