Redefining the concepts of success and failure in infertility treatment

Technology has been used with increasing frequency to achieve fertility in couples who have experienced infertility. However, the success rates of many of the technology-assisted methods continue to be low. One major consequence of the low success rates is that infertile persons often view themselves as "failures." The major thesis of this chapter is that nurses can play a key role in helping individuals and couples redefine their concepts of success and failure. As a result, these persons can differentiate "treatment failure" from "personal failure" and reframe their meanings of infertility and their views of themselves.