Development and feasibility evaluation of a brief self-guided e-Learning training package to support fertility staff in sharing bad news with their patients

Sharing bad news (SBN) is a daily challenge for fertility staff and patients. Bad news happens at all stages of fertility care and includes e.g., diagnosing infertility, reporting unexpected, repeated, or definitive treatment failure. Extensive evidence shows that SBN triggers stress in staff due to anticipation of negative emotions and evaluations or, in extreme cases, even complaints and lawsuits. Inability to manage bad news can increase negative emotions in patients and fuel distrust, potentially leading to treatment discontinuation. Efficient SBN training exists but does not address challenges of SBN in fertility care, does not meet fertility staff training and patient care preferences, and its impact on patients is unclear. The aim of this project is to support best practice in SBN at fertility clinics via co-producing and evaluating a brief, evidence-based, feasible and acceptable e-Learning SBN course bespoke for fertility care: the FertiShare. The first part of the project is the co-production of FertiShare. It consists of co-production workshops with stakeholders to develop the specification (content, features, activities) of FertiShare, and its technical development. This part of the project has already been funded by the Council of Wales, with the prototype expected to be delivered before the start of the proposed evaluation. The second part of the project is the evaluation of FertiShare. This part consists of: 1. a realistic evaluation of FertiShare, to understand how it is used in practice. Specifically, for whom does FertiShare work, under what circumstances, in what respects, how, and why. 2. a feasibility evaluation of FertiShare, to determine if it is feasible to implement it at fertility clinics and if it is feasible to implement a multicentre randomised controlled trial (RCT) to determine its efficacy. We will work with our multidisciplinary stakeholder group to inform all aspects of the project. The project will create the following outcomes: 1. New resources (FertiShare course, research and FertiShare usage data) to support clinics, staff and patients manage reproductive bad news, 2. Methodological and impact knowledge to enhance ESHRE’s e-Campus and educational ambitions, 3. Insights to aid SBN practice inother reproductive areas (e.g., oncofertility, recurrent miscarriage), 4. Contribution to research corpus investigating SBN in healthcare, by advancing knowledge about ‘real world’ implementation of SBN training and testing new theory-driven hypotheses about the impact of training on patients, 5. Three publications reporting on the research developed and associated findings, 6. International collaborative networks and capacity building