Choosing the Right IVF Doctor: The Importance of Being an Educated Patient
We enjoy treating educated, intelligent informed IVF patients! We work hard at trying to get our patients pregnant, and it's important for us that patients understand what we are doing and why we are doing it because we take pride in following global best practices. This is why we are so transparent and why our documentation is so good. We share a lot of information about IVF on our website so that patients can make well-informed decisions for themselves. Sadly, most patients are still very passive and fairly clueless about the IVF process. They don't understand much about IVF, and because most doctors are very paternalistic, they continue blindly trusting any doctor they go to. This is why they find it very hard to differentiate between a good doctor and a bad doctor, and they naively assume that all doctors are equally good. However, well-informed patients, who have the sophistication and ability to push back, ask questions, and think critically for themselves, understand that not all doctors are created equal. Many doctors hide information or use fancy medical jargon in order to justify IVF failure, and patients fail to realize that the reason for the failure was poor quality medical care and not poor quality embryos!
Because we have trained abroad, we have been taught to respect patient preferences and offer non-directive counseling. We prefer treating patients who ask us questions because these are the patients who actually appreciate the hard work we put in. They are intelligent enough to accept that fact that while IVF doctors can control the process, no one in the world can control the final outcome, no matter how good the medical care they provide.
In our clinic, irrespective of the final outcome of the cycle, we want patients to have peace of mind that they have received high-quality medical care - high tech, as well as high touch. Sadly, we find that most patients are still not willing to put in the effort required to understand what an IVF process involves. This is why they continue to fall hook, line, and sinker for all kinds of false claims that many clinics make on their website. They get misled by the photos of celebrities whom the doctor has treated, or by the tall claims of success rates of 80% (!) in the advertisements they run.
We need to ensure that patients have realistic expectations of what IVF can do for them, and this is why we prescribe Information Therapy so actively. The tragedy is that even though this information is free and is easily available on our website at www.drmalpani.com, many patients will not take the time and trouble to understand this. This is why they continue being taken for a ride, and this breaks my heart because we often see patients who could very easily have gotten pregnant if they had taken treatment in a good clinic, but because they have been trapped in a bad IVF clinic by the false promises made to lure them, they fail to get pregnant, as a result of which they lose all their faith and confidence in IVF treatment, and end up getting bankrupt and remaining childless in the bargain.