Guidelines for counselling in infertility: outline version

The Guidelines for Counselling in Infertility describe the purpose, objecti ves, typical issues and communication skills involved in providing psychoso cial care to individuals using fertility services. The Guidelines are prese nted in six sections. The first section describes how infertility consultat ions differ from other medical consultations in obstetrics and gynaecology, whereas the second section addresses fundamental issues in counselling, su ch as what is counselling in infertility, who should counsel and who-is lik ely to need counselling. Section 3 focuses on how to integrate patient-cent red care and counselling into routine medical treatment and section 4 highl ights some of the special situations which can provoke the need for counsel ling (e,g. facing the end of treatment, sexual problems), Section 5 deals e xclusively with third party reproduction and the psychosocial implications of gamete donation, surrogacy and adoption for heterosexual and gay couples and single women without partners. The final section of the Guidelines is concerned with psychosocial services that can be used to supplement counsel ling services in fertility clinics: written psychosocial information, telep hone counselling, self-help groups and professionally facilitated group wor k. This paper summarizes the different sections of the Guidelines and descr ibes how to obtain the complete text of the Guidelines for Counselling in I nfertility.