What to look for in an RE?

JenyM

Hi everyone. I'm a TTCALer but maybe making my way over here soon. I took clomid this month and haven't O. My OB will up me to 100mg next cycle. If that doesn't make me O, then she will refer me to an RE.

What are the things I should look for in an RE office? 

TIA

eileenm21

I am sorry to hear about your loss.  I think what to look for is kind of what's important to you plus the basics.  I would def look at the sart.com for the sucess rates of the clinic (but some say the clinics on there can manipulate their results through who they chose to treat - which is true, but the data is better than nothing)  Then I would look for one that you are comfortable with in terms of their treatment processes, personality, perspective etc.  Also a good office staff since you will be dealing with them a lot.  Someplace convienent is also helpful unless you have the time to travel to go someplace and don't mind the ride.  Its quite a few monitoring appointments and that could impact your life, job etc. 

Some of these things you can't feel out until you meet the dr and go to the office, so if you can visit more than one, that would be great, unless you fell in love with yours on the first shot - which I did, so I just cancelled my second opinion.  Both me and DH are straighforward, no b.s. just get us pg, do what we have to do and don't dawdle around and this dr. was the exact same way. 

 GL and i hope your stay is short! 

tnkrbl21

First - I'm sorry for your loss.  I know how hard it is to TTCAL and then be a TTTC'er.  Like you, the 50 mg of clomid didn't work and then the subsequent 2 rounds of clomid with OB didnt work so we were off to an RE.  We had no clue what we were in for so we were VERY fortunate with our clinic.

I would defintely look for proximity to where you work.  You will have to go for a lot - I mean A LOT - of monitoring.  My clinic did monitoring from 630-830 during the week so it worked out great for me at work, b ut I would get there at 530 some morning and there would be people ahead of me. 

I would also go to sart.org to research a little on their results, but again, like PP said, they can easily manipulate that data. 

I think the MOST important thing to look for is how you feel you are being treated.  If you feel like nothing more than a number, then maybe that isn't the best place.  I LOVED my dr and was actually kind of sad to leave his care and go to my OB.  You have to feel like your concerns are being heard.  Yes the dr is the dr and s/he has all the training, but there needs to be some flexibility in terms of what you expect of your treatment.  I know that after 3 failed IUI's our dr left it up to us to chose more IUI's or to go ahead with an IVF.  He was fine either way and didnt make us feel "bad" for choosing one option over the other.  You also dont want things sugar coated.  As much as this may suck at times, you need to be told the truth - in a caring manner of course.

Lots of luck with everything