How the fear of failure hurts IVF patients

It is often the fear of failure which causes many infertile patients to stay away from exploring IVF treatment.  This fear can be a major emotional hurdle, which stops them from exploring IVF. Even though they know that IVF is the one treatment option which has the highest success rate, they will refuse to consider the option. They prefer keeping it “ in reserve” – as a last resort, in case everything else fails. However, this decision to defer IVF does carry a major opportunity cost , because ovarian reserve declines the longer the decision is postponed.This is the reason many infertile couples will keep on changing gynecologists  and keep on repeating IUI cycle after IUI cycle, without being able to build up the courage to see an IVF specialist.  Their fear ( which often remains unarticulated ) is that if the IVF cycle fails, then they will have nothing else to fall back on. This fear of failure is extremely irrational . Just because there is a possibility of failure , this is not a sound reason to never even attempt IVF. It’s is true that it can take more than one cycle to succeed, but this is far better than wasting time pursuing ineffective options which have a much lower success rate. It is this emotional overreaction to the possibility of failure that puts them off.  Research has shown that, people overestimate the impact of negative events , and psychologists call this impact bias. Women are scared that if their cycle fails , they will go t...
Source: The Patient's Doctor - Category: Obstetricians and Gynecologists Source Type: blogs