‘It was heartbreaking to attend a fertility appointment in a maternity unit’

• Key Takeaways for Clinical Practice
• Fertility services co-location with maternity units causes significant emotional harm – patients experiencing recurrent treatment failure and pregnancy loss report distressing encounters with pregnant women and babies, suggesting need for separate dedicated fertility clinic spaces.
• Long-term subfertility requires sustained psychological support – extended treatment journeys (10+ years, multiple IVF cycles) highlight the importance of integrated mental health services alongside reproductive medicine.
• Service design impacts patient wellbeing – physical and emotional separation of fertility and maternity services should be considered a quality improvement priority to reduce iatrogenic distress during already traumatic patient experiences.

Niamh Smyth and her husband Justyn have spent over a decade trying to start a family, undergoing four rounds of IVF, with three unsuccessful attempts and one pregnancy which ended in miscarriage.

ClinicaliQ summarises and contextualises external updates for clinical awareness, then links to the original publisher for the full article and most current context.