'The Right to Have a Family Should Not Be Determined by Your Postcode': Rural Community Experiences With Fertility Care.
Amanda Mackay, Selina Taylor, Emma Anderson and 1 others
PMID 42530459WHAT IT FOUND
Rural women described fertility care as delayed, costly and hard to keep private, with long travel, GP waits, unclear options and little support.
They wanted local hubs, telehealth, medication help and counselling.
Key findings
01Most participants had difficulties accessing fertility advice, and infertility was described as a taboo subject.
02Accessing ART required long travel, with the shortest distance by road 47 km and most participants required to travel over 200 km.
03Most participants had not been offered formal mental health support, and 11 participants (52%) mentioned wanting local or telehealth mental health support.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
The study interviewed 21 women in rural or remote Queensland, so it cannot represent all rural communities or other countries. It used purposive and snowball sampling, and three suspected imposter interviews were excluded, which may affect who was reached. Only participants identifying as female at birth were included, so men's and partners' experiences were not directly studied. The Modified Monash Model was used to classify rurality, but it did not necessarily reflect actual distance to ART clinics. Findings are experiences and recommendations, not evidence that any service change improves fertility care.
Declared interests
The authors declared nothing to report.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read these recommendations as evidence that local hubs, telehealth or nurse injection support improve fertility care. The study reports what 21 women experienced and wanted; it did not test whether these changes work.