IVF at Hammersmith hospital anyone?

[Ailz]

Hi everyone, I am about to have IVF at Hammersmith Hospital and I am wondering if anyone else has done this (at hammersmith)and how successful it was?

Thanks gilly. I am using their private clinic as i unfortunately dont qualify for NHS as i already have a dd (aged 3). Having my co-ord appt today so very excited/nervous/confused! I am trying to think of as many questions as i can. Good luck with your review appt. hope they tell you lovely things! x

oh it went fine, much shorter than i expected though. dh took afternoon off work as we were told it would take 2 hours and it only took 20 mins! since i came home i have thought of loads of questions - typical! i will email her. just went through the injections, which we are dreading,naturally! Good luck with your review appt. apparently if they dont change the plan of action you should change clinics or so i read recently. I wish you all the luck in the world

Well,I've been dying to share my experience with IVF Hammersmith /the Wolfson family clinic/ since the moment I started, but didn't get a chance to do it. I'm a 34 yr old, in great shape and great health, with no issues on the reproductive side. My husband who is 36, however, occasionally has low motility sperm, which diminishes our chances of getting pregnant naturally, but doesn't make it impossible. Anyway, we just finished our 1st IVF cycle and I have to say the clinic is a joke. Let me be specific - firstly,the only time you see a proper experienced doctor is may be a month before you begin injections - just to tell you that you will be put on a long protocol and to read your chances from a statistics table /which can do yourself/. Do you get to see a doctor during the rest of your treatment? No!!! When you have questions, you call the clinic, leave a message and a nurse calls you. Don't be surprised that the "embryologist" is a 23yr old kid straight out of Med school! The "doctor" doing scans, prescribing meds, doing egg retrieval and embryo implantation is an inexperienced resident at the hospital, learning on the job! And if you think that's not enough - i even managed to negotiate my doses down with that same "doctor" by telling her that i'm really thin and am very sensitive to drugs - that was sufficient for her change the prescription from 225ml to 150ml of Gonal -F. So, if you can get to see a real doctor there, may be worth the chance - but i never thought this kind of delicate and important job would be given to a bunch of medical trainees!

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Ellen - please can you check out the Media requests topic - you need to pay for these reuests

Hi I know this thread is old but unfortunately I can confirm that Wolfson Clinic needs to urgently review their internal processes.
My main complaints are :
Set Up.
Firstly, there Gynecology unit and IVF units are separate entities, and act like two different planets. Once you are referred for IVF, you have no further opportunity to speak to the consultant; all dealings will be with a random nurse. For you want to speak with the consultant - you have to be referred! back to gynecology. It takes a few weeks! And then you have to be referred back to IVF! And that takes a few weeks again. I had 2 additional questions about my dosages and treatment plans - in both cases I had to be referred back back and forth and in total I lost around 6 weeks in each transfer, so bear that in mind.
Nurses answer machine.
You have to call and leave a message. Most of the time you do receive the call the same day. But sometimes they say that they called but in fact, they don't.
Nurses.
You only get "your" nurse when you go for the IVF (post Clomid, for example). But in my case, my nurse has gone on holiday for 2 months next day I went for registration and nobody ever told me... Small thing but clearly could be handled better.
Protocol.
Everyone should receive their individual protocol (plan for next few months). I haven't. And once I received it I realised that my protocol wasn't individual. It was only referring to the last, ivf stage. Had no information about 2 more stages before that (I had a womb scratch in cycle 1 and progesteron for 2 weeks and cycle 3, and ivf cycle 3). My husband and I were sitting there writing down things furiously as there was nothing in the document. We had to prod the nurse, and she was tired and short and kept referring to protocol and we were like: 'but it doesn't have any of that info?!'.
Prepare to be 'footballed'.
I had headaches from hell for 3 weeks and I went to GP to check my blood and test came back with abnormal levels of prolactin. As I just finished the IVF injections and had an egg retrieval a week ago I suspected it could be the side effect of that. So I called the Wolfson clinic and spoke with the nurse trying to find out if this was an expected reaction to the ivf drugs and what should I do next. She said: of we wont do the transfer until prolactin levels drop but you need to be monitored by GP. I was a bit puzzled and upset as GP has no capacity to monitor me and he can prescribe me some wrong med that may affect the ivf. And why would GP need to deal with this? Surely, IVF clinic should be monitoring me and controlling such side effects?? In the end, she promised to talk to the doctor and doctor will call me but God, that was a hard work!
Miscarriage.
I had one while on the drugs with Wolfwon. Not a phonecall, no consultancy, no offer of seeing a psychologist... nothing. ZERO interest. What a stark difference in comparison with the Westminster and Chelsea Hospital.

On a positive note, my protocol was spot on and I had a very good result with egg retrieval. Nurses and doctors are nice. Shame it's the small things that bring down the overall experience.

I’ve just had an Amazing experience at the wolfson, it’s quiet, they look after you, the treatment is spot on and ultimately it’s been successful. Ivf is gruelling at the best of times but I’m really grateful to the wolfson and would recommend it any day. If I could have the baby there I would too.

Won't recommand this clinic at all. You never know what the entire ivf treatment will be like during the entire time. and we paid pravitely as well. One time I had a scan before the egg collection and I asked the doctor: should I have the blood test again? At first she said, no you dont need, and one minute later, she checked my record and said oh you you will have one later. After the blood test me and husband went back home, few hours later, the clinic called us saying you forgot to do the covid test. How can we know we need a covid test?
This kind of issues happened during the entire treatment as they assume the paitient is the expert of ivf, knowing every step of the prosess.