Fertility Nurses – Giving Mother Nature A Helping Hand

In the November issue of Canadian Nurse, a magazine published by the Canadian Nurses Association (CNA), there is a special feature on fertility titled, Fertility Nurses: Giving Mother Nature A Helping Hand.

In the featured article Southern Ontario Fertility Technologies‘ (S.O.F.T.) own fertility nurse, Brad Ferris, contributes to the content in helping to explain the unique perspective a fertility nurse brings to a patient(s) who are attempting to conceive.

“For Brad Ferris, it is looking at the pictures on his ‘miracle wall’ in the nursing office that helps with the bad days when a patient has miscarried or when he’s had to tell a patient her treatment has ended without success. The wall holds pictures of babies that he and the other nurses at the Southern Ontario Fertility Technologies clinic in London never expected to meet – the ones who defied the odds. ‘We have a picture of a baby who was the result of over 2,000 days of treatment,’ says Ferris, who came to fertility nursing 18 months ago from pediatric emergency nursing. ‘Every baby is important. It doesn’t matter if that baby is healthy or sick – that’s someone’s miracle.’”

“For Ferris, and for many other nurses, the best part of the job is the day patients bring their babies to the clinic. Since the nurses aren’t involved in deliveries, that visit is usually
the first time they see the tangible results of their clinic’s teamwork and of the efforts it has taken to help create these lives. ‘When someone comes in with their baby we will almost literally drop everything so we can celebrate,” says Ferris. “It’s joyful.’”