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1 October 2011 Social Responsibility of Medical Institutions Specializing in Infertility Treatment
Atsumi Yoshida
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Abstract

Efforts by corporations to fulfill their social responsibilities will lead to consumers' social satisfaction and a steady rise in their stock prices. For medical institutions, the establishment of a system for the fulfillment of social responsibility would lead not only to patients' trust and satisfaction, but also to improved safety of medical care. Infertility treatment plays an important role in reversing the decline in Japan's birthrate. However, since infertility treatment, unlike other medical practices, involves birth of a new life, the results of medical services provided by infertility clinics/hospitals will have a great impact on the future society. For example, in the procedures of in vitro fertilization (IVF) and intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), sperm and an egg are once taken out of the body, and an embryo formed from the egg is returned to the uterus. Therefore, the greatest possible care must be taken to prevent mix-up of eggs and sperm. In addition, since the process of IVF or ICSI cannot be automated with machines (in other words, IVF and ICSI are skilled manual procedures), there is a possibility that medical accidents, such as inadvertent destruction or loss of embryos, may occur. It is therefore necessary for clinics or hospitals engaged in infertility treatment to record all processes and make them transparent, and thereby become institutions patients can trust. To gain the trust of people visiting the institutions and the public at large, it would be very effective to apply the concept of corporate or organizational social responsibility to the field of infertility treatment. Medical institutions specializing in infertility treatment must establish a basic philosophy, perform infertility treatment with a sense of bioethics and social ethics, disclose all requests and complaints from patients and the countermeasures implemented in response, undergo periodic audits, know the level of satisfaction of patients and medical staff, and carry out social awareness activities. By fulfilling their social responsibility through these activities, they can improve the quality of their services.

Atsumi Yoshida "Social Responsibility of Medical Institutions Specializing in Infertility Treatment," Journal of Mammalian Ova Research 28(4), 190-197, (1 October 2011). https://doi.org/10.1274/jmor.28.190
Published: 1 October 2011
JOURNAL ARTICLE
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KEYWORDS
ICSI
infertility
IVF
Medical Institutions
Social Responsibility
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