EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF A TERATOGEN INFORMATION-SERVICE - A SURVEY OF PATIENT AND PROFESSIONAL SATISFACTION

We have evaluated the effectiveness of the Wisconsin Teratogen Project (WTP), a teratogen information service, using two retrospective surve ys. We surveyed medical professionals who utilized the WTP and patient s who had received teratogen counseling in a clinic setting. The resul ts from the medical professional survey indicated that medical profess ionals rely on the WTP for accurate and convenient teratogen informati on. A tendency to rely on the Physician's Desk Reference as an alterna tive resource was noted, reinforcing the need to encourage professiona ls to use teratogen information service projects. Major findings and c onclusions from the patient survey included: patients found counseling to be most helpful if, whenever possible, numeric risks were provided ; recommendations made in the absence of known risk were not considere d by patients to be helpful for providing reassurance; overall complia nce with recommendations was high but behavioral recommendations seeme d to reduce reassurance and increase dissatisfaction with the service for some patients; and pregnant women exposed to low-dose ionizing rad iation were more likely to have considered termination of pregnancy pr ior to referral but were not more likely to terminate following counse ling. Our findings suggest that although the WTP is considered an effe ctive service overall, teratogen counselors should give special consid eration to patient and counseling characteristics as these can signifi cantly influence the perception of the risk counseling provided. Parti cular attention should be given to patients with low-dose ionizing rad iation exposure, since misperception of its teratogenic risk is extrem ely common. (C) 1993 Wiley-Liss, Inc.