Informing and counselling with the use of electronic resources prior to drug-induced abortion

Objective. To improve the quality of informing and counselling patients before pregnancy termination and to assess physicians’ satisfaction with the content of audio-video presentations on standard questions given prior to abortion. Subjects and methods. This was a multicenter prospective simple cohort controlled study. Information on test questions was collected using specially designed 20-item questionnaires for physicians. The investigators analyzed 92 questionnaires, including 62 ones that contained information on patients who had listened to the audio-video before pregnancy termination (a study group) and 30 ones having on those who had obtained only oral information from a physician. Results. 40% (12/30) of the patients who had obtained only a physician’s oral information prior to abortion called their physician between the administration of mifepristone and the control visit versus 3.2% (2/62) of those who had listened to the audio-video did this 12 times less frequently (p < 0.001). An additional visit was made by 13.3% (4/30) of the patients on their own initiative without having any evidence for this (only two of them had any complications) and by 3.2% (2/62) of those in the study group (by 4 times less frequently). On the contrary, the number of patients who had not made a control visit on the scheduled day was 23.3% (7/30) and 9.7% (6/62), respectively; that was 2.4 times less frequently (p < 0.005). Regardless of its form, counselling prior to abortion caused a high frequency of contraception choice (96.8% (60/62) in the study group and 86.7% (26/30) in the control group). Conclusion. The quality of pre-abortion information with the use of audio-video presentations on modern gadgets corresponds to the high assessments by physicians and allows them to improve the consultation process, which is accompanied by the optimization of working time, by reducing the latter to provide the information and decreasing the number of phone calls and unscheduled visits. © 2017, Bionika Media Ltd. All rights reserved.