Prioritising the wellbeing of women

Dif­fi­cul­ty con­ceiv­ing can place enor­mous emo­tion­al and finan­cial strain on the one in sev­en cou­ples it affects in the UK. Accord­ing to Pub­lic Health Eng­land, half of women that have expe­ri­enced fer­til­i­ty issues see it as the most upset­ting expe­ri­ence of their lives. And research from the Cen­ter for Women’s Men­tal Health at Mass­a­chu­setts Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, asso­ci­at­ed with Har­vard Med­ical School, claims depres­sion is up to 54 per cent more like­ly among infer­tile cou­ples than their fer­tile coun­ter­parts.

Any­thing that dimin­ish­es a couple’s men­tal health can not only be dam­ag­ing to their rela­tion­ship with each oth­er and over­all well­be­ing, but can also neg­a­tive­ly impact their fer­til­i­ty issues even fur­ther. In a 2018 study from Boston University’s School of Pub­lic Health, women who expe­ri­enced high­er lev­els of stress had low­er rates of con­cep­tion.

This makes it absolute­ly cru­cial that a woman’s jour­ney with a fer­til­i­ty clin­ic is pos­i­tive from her first vis­it all the way through to treat­ment cycles and after­care. Yet while expe­ri­ences at the ini­tial con­sul­ta­tion will often be good, research from The Evewell, a clin­ic on London’s pres­ti­gious Harley Street, found that when a clin­ic gets too big in terms of the num­ber of cycles it is doing, ser­vice lev­els can fall sig­nif­i­cant­ly at the treat­ment stage.

This is one of the most sen­si­tive and dif­fi­cult areas of med­i­cine in terms of people’s well­be­ing, and you have to be acute­ly aware of the emo­tion­al and finan­cial pres­sures fer­til­i­ty treat­ment pos­es

“Often women will find there are just too many peo­ple in the build­ing,” says Emma Kafton, founder and patient ser­vices direc­tor at The Evewell. “Peo­ple are stand­ing out­side the pro­ce­dure room, queu­ing to be sedat­ed and have their eggs col­lect­ed, feel­ing like they are part of a fac­to­ry line. This just shouldn’t be hap­pen­ing to peo­ple.

“Com­mu­ni­ca­tion is often stretched, which is a real prob­lem as patients need to know they are being kept up to date and involved in their treat­ment. This is one of the most sen­si­tive and dif­fi­cult areas of med­i­cine in terms of people’s well­be­ing, and you have to be acute­ly aware of the emo­tion­al and finan­cial pres­sures fer­til­i­ty treat­ment pos­es.”

Kafton’s con­vic­tion that things should be done dif­fer­ent­ly is what drove her to open The Evewell in 2018 with med­ical direc­tor Col­in Davis, an emi­nent con­sul­tant gynae­col­o­gist and fer­til­i­ty expert with more than 20 years’ expe­ri­ence. Togeth­er, they cre­at­ed the state-of-the-art cen­tre to rede­fine what women should expect from a fer­til­i­ty clin­ic.

Each patient goes through a bespoke jour­ney to get to the heart of their fer­til­i­ty prob­lems, and the clin­ic itself is designed to fos­ter a calm and car­ing envi­ron­ment from the recep­tion to the con­sult­ing rooms, treat­ment and after­care. The Evewell offers a free coun­selling ses­sion with all its IVF cycles. If there is a failed cycle, it will always offer a fol­low-up con­sul­ta­tion with the patient’s doc­tor to ensure the sup­port con­tin­ues.

The Evewell’s real unique­ness, how­ev­er, is that it is a women’s health cen­tre pro­vid­ing both gynae­col­o­gy and fer­til­i­ty treat­ment. Davis, who is the rare com­bi­na­tion of a gynae­col­o­gist, obste­tri­cian and spe­cial­ist in repro­duc­tive med­i­cine, was frus­trat­ed at the alarm­ing lack of focus on gynae­col­o­gy in fer­til­i­ty clin­ics. By run­ning the prac­tices side by side, The Evewell is able to iden­ti­fy gynae­co­log­i­cal issues such as endometrio­sis and fibroids that could, if treat­ed effec­tive­ly, enable a patient to con­ceive nat­u­ral­ly.

“Fer­til­i­ty and gynae­col­o­gy have to be prac­tised togeth­er; you can’t look at one in iso­la­tion,” says Davis. “If some­body comes to us as a fer­til­i­ty patient strug­gling to have a baby, we will always advise on the most appro­pri­ate treat­ment to achieve a preg­nan­cy in the short­est time­frame. If a patient requires a gynae­co­log­i­cal pro­ce­dure, which may well be pre­vent­ing con­cep­tion, our con­sul­tants can per­form that surgery.

“The Evewell’s cen­tral focus is how it can help a per­son or cou­ple to con­ceive with the least pos­si­ble inter­ven­tion. If we can save some­one the emo­tion­al and finan­cial strug­gles that go with fer­til­i­ty treat­ment and achieve a suc­cess­ful preg­nan­cy, then we’ve done our job.”

For more infor­ma­tion please vis­it www.evewell.com