ANALYSIS OF THE FAMILY PLANNING CONSULTATION
Medical consultations, particularly in general practice, are complicated interpersonal transactions. The family planning consultation is fundamentally no different from other consultations. Along with many other problems which are presented to doctors whose content is not to do with illness, a different approach is needed from that which many doctors were taught at medical school. In addition, the content of family planning consultations is sensitive and delicate, as has been demonstrated in Chapter 12. Both parties need to be comfortable talking about sex for the consultation to succeed. As McEwan (1982) has put it, ‘More successful consulting techniques in family planning involve providing the scientific or biomedical knowledge about methods, against a background of nondirective counselling in relation to the social and practical elements of applying the advice to everyday life in sexual relationships.’
One of the ways of helping doctors and other health care workers to provide better contraceptive services is to study what happens in the consultation. Such study can help the doctor to acquire the skill of becoming entangled with the patient’s problem and then stepping back and thinking about what is happening. In this chapter mainly the process of the consultation is considered; outcomes of consultations are less well researched and hopefully more can be included in future editions of this book.
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