Background: The aims were: (i). to identify gender differences in evaluation of medical and patient-centred (psychosocial) care in fertility clinics and (ii). to identify predictors of satisfaction.
Methods: An epidemiological prospective study based on questionnaire responses among all new couples attending five fertility clinics. The response rate at the 12 month follow-up was 87.7% and included a total of 1934 patients.
Results: During the follow-up period about two-thirds had achieved a pregnancy and about a third became parents. The participants were satisfied with both the medical and patient-centred (psychosocial) services. There were no sex differences in the evaluation of treatment except that women were more satisfied than men with how the staff had performed their medical examinations. Satisfaction with medical and patient-centred services was positively associated with a treatment-related pregnancy/delivery and the report of marital benefits resulting from the infertility experience. Lower social class was a significant predictor for satisfaction.
Conclusions: Both men and women in fertility treatment had high ratings on medical and patient-centred care. It seemed that satisfaction with the psychosocial services was higher than in earlier studies from other countries.