ABSTRACT
The potential usefulness of a Family Planning Risk Scoring Sheet was studied in 1720 consecutive women who completed a family planning visit and were prescribed a specific contraceptive method. The results demonstrated that many women had relative or absolute contraindications to their prescribed method that were detected later by the Family Planning Risk Scoring Sheet. There were 29 women in the oral contraceptive and intrauterine device groups who had absolute contraindications detected (2.8 and 2.4%, respectively). The nurse practitioners tended to have fewer unrecognized problems in their groups than did the physicians. The usefulness of the Family Planning Risk Scoring Sheet was demonstrated and its routine use in a busy family planning unit is recommended.
Subject(s)
Contraception/adverse effects , Family Planning Services , Medical Records , Adult , Contraception/methods , Contraceptives, Oral/classification , Female , Health Status Indicators , Humans , Idoxuridine/classification , Illinois , RiskABSTRACT
PIP: Utilizing a risk scoring system for selection of the proper contraceptive method for women seeking family planning care is discussed and recommended as being attractive and practical. Because there are risks associated with specific contraceptive methods, such as thrombosis with oral contraception and pelvic infections with intrauterine contraception, it is necessary to preselect the safest method for individual women. Testing 495 women upon their first visit to the clinic, the authors compared each woman's desired method with the methods selected for by the risk-scoring system. Based on a point score of 1-10 with 10 indicating high risk, it is shown that 42% of the women desiring oral contraception had some risk to be considered while 5.1% had a high risk score. For women desiring the intrauterine device, 28.6% had some risk factor while 4.2% had a high risk score. They conclude that 3 advantages are: 1) the system was easy to use and pointed out problem areas before a method was selected, 2) the system provided a means of quickly monitoring the patient's care by a large number of persons, and 3) the scoring sheet served as a teaching device.^ieng