BENEFITS AND DRAWBACKS OF WORKING WITHIN AN IVF LAB NETWORK: A SURVEY OF CLINICAL EMBRYOLOGISTS.

Historically, many IVF laboratories have been independent entities. Within the United States, in the last five to ten years, an increasing number of IVF practices have undergone federation into large, nationwide networks. IVF is a complex process and existing labs or staff have often defined their own operation processes, which may need to be balanced with those of the network. The objective of this survey was to discern embryologist’s views about working within an IVF network. The targeted web-based survey was deployed to all embryologists at ten locations in a single North American-based IVF Network. One location (the central management unit) was excluded to mitigate potential bias. Participants consented to take the anonymous and non-mandatory survey, which was composed of Likert scale statements and open-ended questions related to operations within an IVF lab network. When possible, the questions were framed in both the affirmative (positive) and negative to capture a range of impressions. Descriptive statistics were used to provide frequency of respondent characteristics and of categories. The final survey results comprised 31 embryologists. Of those, 29% identified as male, 67% identified as female, and 3% did not identify. 25% had PhD, 29% had MS, and 42% had BS/BA. 38% worked within the network for 1-2 years, 22% for 3-5 years, and 29% for 6-8 years, only 9% (3 respondents) worked within the network for less than 1 year. The majority of embryologists surveyed also had significant work experience prior to joining a network (41% had over 10 years of experience, 22% had 3-5 years, and 12% 6-8 years.) Patient care (89%), procurement (83%), quality control (87%) and assurance (94%), participation in research, and quality inspections (87%) generated the highest agreement (strongly agree + agree) with positive perceptions. Staff training, salaries, benefits, and working hours, generated highly variable responses with positive perceptions falling to 25% of respondents in each category. Ability to advance career within the network (51%), or move between locations (51%) were moderately important. The vast majority of all respondents (90%) did not have a strong desire to choose the media, equipment, or vitrification devices for their location and saw value in the network standardizing these items. Major themes that emerged from the perceived benefits of working in a network of IVF clinics were consistency and confidence, knowledge sharing and data, quality and standard of care, physical resources, and reputation. The major higher order themes of the drawbacks included; rigidity, communication, department or location specific, and training and compensation.