Supportive Care Needs and Medical Care Requests of Male Patients during Infertility Treatment

Abstract

Background: This study aimed to clarify the supportive care needs and medical care requests of male patients during their infertility treatment to be able to provide them with optimal nursing care. Methods: A self-filled questionnaire survey was conducted in 411 male patients who were undergoing infertility treatment at 4 human reproductive clinics. The investigation period was from April to August 2016. This research used across-sectional study design. The submission of the filled questionnaire was taken as an indication of agreement and consent to the research. The main contents of the questionnaire were attributions, care needs, and medical care requests of male patients. The care needs were evaluated by descriptive statistics, and the free descriptions of the medical care requests were analyzed for their contents qualitatively and recursively. The study was performed after the approval of the Research Ethics Review Committee. Results: The number of valid responses was 331 (80.5%). The care needs of the male patients were warm care from their wives, provision of information on their treatment, daily life information for conceiving, and evaluation data. The 6 categories of the open-ended responses were as follows: warm support, improvement of examination environment, adjustment of medical examination schedule, information provision, support from wife, and subsidy for treatment costs. These were extracted from the medical care requests by qualitative inductive analysis. Conclusions: The care needs and medical care requests of male patients undergoing infertility treatment were mainly on being provided information and supporting their wives. As supporting nursing care for these male patients, provision of sufficient information regarding the examination results and infertility treatment is recommended, and environmental considerations peculiar to male patients are necessary. Consideration from female patients is also an indispensable factor similarly to the provision of care for male patients.