Quality of care in family planning: clients' rights and providers' needs

Quality of care means that the needs of the clients in the context of their personal life should be the major determinant of the behavior of the providers and the goal of the programs. Since family planning has been recognized as a right of individuals and couples, quality of care can be focused as a right of the client. Ten rights of family planning clients have been outlined by the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) as follows. Rights to: information, access, choice, safety, privacy, confidentiality, dignity, comfort, continuity, and opinion. The responsibilities for quality of care, and therefore fulfilling the rights of the clients, are distributed throughout the whole family planning program, but those who are actually seen as most responsible are the ones who are in direct contact with the clients--the service providers. A strategy for quality of care cannot be realistic without recognising that service providers have their own needs which can be outlined as: training, information infrastructure, supplies, guidance, back-up, respect, encouragement, feedback, and self-expression. When fulfilling the rights of the clients and needs of the service providers, both technical and human aspects should be taken into account.