Deep Dive: Deep Dive Into Patient-Centered Contraception Counseling

Christine Dehlendorf, MD, MAS, is passionate about returning women to the center of decisions made about contraception and family planning. To some the term “patient centered counseling” may sound overused, even gimmicky. But when the topic is how, when, or if a woman wants to conceive, the first job of the clinician is to elicit the patient’s needs and desires as the patient defines them, not to forge ahead based on a preconceived notion of what “a patient like this” should want or should do. Her research focuses on how to facilitate this shift of choice fully back into the patient’s hands.