It is apparent that IVF nurses abroad are concerned that when their patients return home, they feel doubtful that patients are self - administering their meds properly. Many nurses voiced their concerns to us that some ladies feel fearful of injecting themselves successfully.
We also know that many patients often do not receive a medication teaching session from their International clinic -and we also know that this causes immense levels of stress just at the time that the journey is starting.
So, we designed a system where international patients in the UK can have a supportive and caring nurse to help with both those first night needle nerves and a full medication teaching session.
How do we do that?
1. We provide a home visit,
2. We provide a remote session with an IVF nurse
I am proud that we are unique in providing complete hands on support for your UK patients.
Guest blog from an IVF survivor “It was our first night of “stims” (that’s IVF slang for the stimulation phase of treatment in which you self-inject medication for around eight to 14 days to induce your ovaries to produce a bumper crop of their finest eggs) – and I will never forget the rising panic I felt as 7pm came and went.
You see, I barely knew one end of a syringe from another, let alone how to fill it with the specified quantity of a very expensive fertility drug which sat glaring at me from its tiny glass ampule. As for actually injecting it into my own body...well...
I was wildly trying to remember what the nurses had told me, oh six weeks previously (yes – SIX WEEKS), when I’d sat blinking and nodding at them during the all-important “injection teach” session. But my mind was blank. Totally empty.
After furiously Googling “How to inject yourself” (that’s right, in my desperation I’d turned to Dr G to help me administer the most important injection of my entire life) I rallied the support of the wonderful women in the Facebook IVF support group of which I was a member.
Social media might get a bad rep, but my goodness, this community of online strangers was there for me within seconds, offering help and advice on how to get through this fraught initial self-stabbing!
It may not surprise you then, that I have a few axes to grind with the way my particular injection teach session played out (and if you had a more positive experience then that’s absolutely fantastic).
Why? 1. The timings were all wrong. It took place after a meeting with my consultant in which he’d gone through my complex protocol in detail. My head was swimming. I was overwhelmed. I was not in a position to absorb any new information.
2. I was also extremely emotional (quietly sobbing in fact). Still in disbelief that this was happening to us, that we were here, in a real IVF clinic about to wave goodbye to our life savings. Being handed a syringe to inject into a rubber bean bag did not help at this point.
3. Injecting a syringe into a rubber bean bag is nothing like jabbing an extremely sharp needle into your own (considerable) rolls of fat. Because it may come as no surprise that stabbing yourself with a pointed object goes against all of your own natural instincts. Especially on the first night of your stims when your anxiety will be at an all-time high and you know that getting this wrong could literally mean the difference between baby or no baby.”
Remote nurse help? Wow, yes please!
If you want to learn more about The Fertility Pharmacy and Nurse at Home, check their website
here.
