A flow of feeling cannot occur if the doctor spends the whole time asking questions or giving advice, and he or she learns to allow the patient to choose the subject matter by a judicious use of open-ended questions and encouraging signs. Such an approach can take less time and is more appropriate to a [...]

Mrs S. was a favourite with the doctor. She was a bubbly woman, confident and attractive, who had worked hard to educate herself and had achieved an Open University degree and a post as a legal executive after an upbringing in a working class family. She rarely consulted except for contraception and the doctor felt [...]

Just as the bulge of the pregnant abdomen proclaims that sexual activity has taken place, patients who attend a doctor for contraceptive advice reveal that hey are sexually active or wish to become so. An intensely private matter becomes one of public knowledge and concern. It is not surprising that people find it difficult to [...]

For the doctor faced with a patient whose mothering capacities are stretched to the limit, great skill is needed to allow her to sense that he or she is on her side, and that the doctor is not denying her a sterilization, nor is being insensitive to her determination not to get pregnant again, but [...]

For any person or couple the decision to be sterilized is a major one and feelings need to be explored. For couples where there is a disability the whole issue of fertility and the advisability of pregnancy must be considered. It is important for the doctor to be able to give an informed and nonjudgemental [...]