崎山貴代
母性衛生, 53(4) 538-545, Jan, 2013 Peer-reviewed
The purpose of this study is to clarify the situation and problems of Infertility Counseling Centers in local governments. Participants in the study consisted of counselors at 87 centers. The participants were asked to complete an unsigned self-administered questionnaire, consisting of items relating to their jobs and systems of counseling, realization of difficulty regarding counseling, etc. As a result, approximately half of the centers had established selection criteria for counselors, and 60 percents of the centers provided support through counselors of two or more types of profession. 40 percents of the centers answered that they had systems of cooperation with other institutions, but only 10 percents of the centers engaged in cooperative counseling with other institutions. Also, it was observed that 20 percents of the centers-although only having one type of counselor- did not have any kind of cooperative system, and difficulties handling problems outside of the range of the counselors' professional fields were expressed. Furthermore, approximately half of the centers carried out events such as lectures for health care providers. Also, some centers evaluated their duties through the holding of conferences, but there were also centers which did not conduct evaluations. From these results, we feel that it is necessary for centers to conduct evaluations according to problems in counseling systems and actual counseling, and for the centers to evaluate the entirety of their operations including counseling according to the needs of women suffering from infertility and problems in the region, and to make modifications to their methods according to the actual situation of their respective regions.