ASRM held its first ever Advocacy Academy in Washington, D.C. on December 9th and 10th, 2015. About 30 ASRM members met to learn more about advocacy at the state and federal levels, for better legislation on reproductive care. Special focus was paid to Congress's current ban on IVF for veterans, and the pending pieces of legislation that would provide that care to our vets. On Capitol Hill, we met with the offices of our individual members. Being new to advocacy in this way, these are the five most valuable things I learned from ASRM's advocacy workshop.
New Research: IVF success impacts fertility clinic reviews. But how much?
I wish I could say that this new research provides us with all of the answers we've sought, but I think we're left with new questions. That's fine by me, I find it encouraging. We've talked about reproductive endocrinologist (RE) and fertility center reviews, and the psychology behind them. This new data helps us understand how success of treatment impacts the rating of a fertility clinic or fertility doctor review.
12 Blogs and Podcasts that Fertility Clinics Should Share with Their Patients
I believe that the fertility centers who provide their patients with the most opportunities for information, connection, and community are those that stand to gain. One of the most common pain-points described by people coping with infertility is not having people in their social circles that can relate to their journey.
For this reason, so many people have bravely decided to share their experiences online, and their content has become invaluable to couples and individuals struggling with infertility. Fertility centers can empower their patients by linking to some of this media on their websites, and even sending new patients home with a printed resource.
10 Highlights From What You Missed at RESOLVE's 2015 Night of Hope
November 17, 2015 marked RESOLVE's 18th annual, Night of Hope, in Manhattan. As the cardinal event of the national infertility association, the gala promotes RESOLVE's mission to support men and women experiencing infertility.
The 25 Best Words to Describe REs in Fertility Clinic Reviews
Now, on to the good news.
In an earlier post, I had written about the 28 harshest words that people use to describe reproductive endocrinologists. Paying attention to the words that people use to desrcribe their REs and their fertility clinics begins to offer insight on how we can improve their experience. This time, I made a word cloud of the most common positive adjectives that people use in RE reviews.
28 Scathing Words for REs Across Fertility Center Reviews
If you are a reproductive endocrinologist (RE), you don't have an easy job. I don't mention this to state the obvious, nor flatter you, nor am I referring to surgical talent, study, or training.
It's heir-apparent that one of the most difficult aspects of the role of an RE is serving a population under enormous emotional and mental stress, who are often financially burdened, subject to unfair social pressure, all within great deal of outcome-uncertainty.
The Top 10 Tweets from ASRM 2015
We've just wrapped up an excellent time at the 2015 meeting of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) in Baltimore. It was my very first ASRM meeting, and the only thing I like more than meeting new friends is getting to see old ones.
With so many tracks and sessions over the five day meeting, you couldn't be everywhere at once. But thanks to #ASRM2015's live tweeters, we had people keeping us abreast of what went on. Here are 10 of the most informative tweets from the meeting.
Tribe Marketing For Fertility Centers
If you're not familiar with one of my favorite authors, you may want to check out Seth Godin.
Godin says “A tribe is a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea. A group needs only two things to be a tribe: a shared interest and a way to communicate.”
Most healthcare categories do not have tribes. Dermatology patients are not connected by an idea. They have no shared interest and thus no leader or way to communicate. Couples and individuals struggling with infertility are connected by an idea however. They are connected by the feeling of loneliness and exclusion. They are connected by the feeling that they want to know their problems are human.