Ensuring patient safety at fertility clinics

In the years since the birth of the first ‘test-tube’ baby in 1978, in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) has grown to become an accepted mainstream medical technique, with more than 25,000 treatments carried out every year.

However people are still rightly concerned about these techniques and practices which lead to the creation of new life, and to what the long-term consequences of these actions are.

We know that any problems or mix-ups could have potentially devastating consequences for the child to be born, the people receiving treatment and their surrounding families, both now and in the years to come. Like other areas of medicine it is not possible to eliminate all risks, but we have improved safety in clinics and this will continue.

The HFEA makes sure that fertility clinics fulfil their duty to ensure patient safety and minimise any risk or error in their work. We do this by:

• Requiring that all clinics performing IVF and certain other types of treatment have been licensed by the HFEA before they can operate
• Providing detailed guidelines for clinics in its Code of Practice, which set out required standards
• Inspecting clinics at least once a year to ensure they are operating to the relevant standards
• Ensuring that clinics have appropriate staff with the right skills and experience before they can carry out specialist tasks such as ICSI (IntraCytoplasmic Sperm Injection) and PGD embryo screening
• Requiring that clinics have an effective ‘quality control’ system to monitor their laboratory, clinical and counselling practice. Clinics must also demonstrate that their procedures are satisfactory when compared to the highest standards of other professionals in these relevant disciplines

We continue to take steps to improve standards and safety and to reduce risks across the fertility sector. Over the last three years, HFEA has further strengthened the protection against IVF problems with the following measures:

• Introducing double checking of patient identification at all stages of treatment 
• Setting up an alert system to ensure timely investigation of all incidents and the sharing of information on lessons learnt to all clinics in the UK
• A clear and detailed procedure for assessing risks in clinics has been developed. This works alongside the protocols which ensure all clinic inspections are thorough and consistent
• Introducing unannounced inspections of clinics
• The introduction of an in-house inspectorate with improved selection, training and accreditation of inspectors and specialist inspection advisers
• Including patient feedback in the inspection process
• An extended and revised edition of the Code of Practice
• The HFEA is examining new technologies such as barcodes and radio identification to see if these would provide a safe and effective way to further reduce the chance of laboratory errors

http://www.hfea.gov.uk