Background: The Covid-19 pandemic has interrupted family planning services, such as by canceling or rescheduling appointments with little notice (Tschann, Lange, Ly, & Hilliard, 2020). A May 2020 national patient survey demonstrated changes to pregnancy intention and attitudes towards contraception (Lindberg, VandeVusse, Mueller, & Kirstein, 2020). Even before the pandemic, Georgia had high rates of ...Read more >

myTIPreport, a web-based trainee feedback platform, has been adopted for use by all Fellowship in Complex Family Planning (CFP) sites. This evaluation tool has been validated for providing feedback for both procedures and milestones in Obstetrics and Gynecology four-year residency programs and a three-year subspecialty, Female Pelvic Medicine and Reconstructive Surgery. Given the shorter timeframe ...Read more >

With the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic exacerbating the already existing problem of access to abortion-care across the United States, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) recommends making no-test abortion more widely available to patients that qualify. Instead of the standard steps prior to undergoing a medical abortion, which typically include a physical ...Read more >

Ketamine is commonly used for procedural sedation and analgesia. It is widely used for trauma cases in the emergency department and is considered a superior agent in the outpatient setting due to its lack of respiratory and cardiovascular depression. In chronic opioid users, ketamine decreases acute pain and reduces postoperative opioid consumption. Few studies have ...Read more >

Eighteen million reproductive aged women living in rural America experience marked access limitations to contraceptive services. Rural U.S. counties also lack abortion clinics, and patients must travel to larger communities for care. Provision of affordable post-abortion contraception, particularly LARC methods, may fill a crucial service gap for rural patients but is challenging to implement due ...Read more >

Medical education relies on patient consent to provide trainees with the experiences to become competent doctors and ensure future access to healthcare. Abortion care in the United States is uniquely stigmatized, politicized, and has ongoing barriers to access, including a lack of new providers in training. Obtaining consent for trainee participation in a patient-centered manner ...Read more >

Background: The 2019 APGO Medical Student Educational Objectives state that medical graduates should be able to provide non-directive, non-judgmental pregnancy options counseling. However, only 30% of U.S. medical schools include any teaching about options counseling in their preclinical curricula and little evidence is available about best practices for teaching options counseling. Based on the theory ...Read more >

Background: In Texas, abortion is legal through 20 weeks; exceptions past this gestational age include “severe fetal abnormalities.” Abortion counseling in the setting of lethal or severely morbid fetal anomalies may be performed by Maternal-Fetal Medicine specialists (MFMs) in settings without Family Planning specialists (FPs), as is the case in many places in Texas. MFMs ...Read more >

Ultrasound use in the assessment of medical abortion eligibility varies by practice site. The National Abortion Federation (NAF), the Society of Family Planning (SFP), and the World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines do not recommend the routine use of ultrasonography; however, many institutions and practices still require this as part of clinic protocol. Furthermore, many clinicians ...Read more >

We conducted a multisite, double blind, randomized clinical trial to assess the utility of nitrous oxide for pain relief in early second trimester abortion. This study randomized participants to receive either inhaled nitrous oxide or intravenous (IV) sedation with fentanyl and midazolam. We included women desiring abortion at gestational ages between 12 weeks 0 days ...Read more >