Episode 31: What Should Pharmacists and Other Healthcare Professionals Know About Natural Family Planning? What to Tell Your Patients

Are you a pharmacist, physician, naturopath, or other healthcare professional caring for menstruating women? Has your patient ever asked you about natural family planning? Maybe she hasn’t used this term exactly, but maybe she has asked about an alternative to hormonal birth control, or maybe she’s inquired about ways to enhance her fertility, or maybe you are helping her work through irregular periods. Natural family planning teaches a woman to recognize her natural signs of fertility, keep track of those signs, and then use that information to achieve her family planning and health goals.

Here are the take-aways:
-Natural family planning (NFP) is synonymous with fertility awareness
-Patients may be interested in natural family planning because it is natural, because they have had issues with birth control, because they’re interested in a method where both partners have shared responsibility for family planning, because she wants to learn one method she can use multiple ways, or for social/religious reasons (ex. Catholicism)
-Four fertility signs a woman can track: cervical mucus, basal body temperature, urinary hormone levels of estrogen and luteinizing hormone, cervix changes
-There are multiple natural family planning methods that utilize one or more of these fertility signs
-The Two-Day method is a simplified cervical-mucus-only method that is relatively easy to teach and to use
-The Standard Days method is different from other natural family planning methods in that it teaches a woman to use a fixed fertile window (instead of identifying her unique day of ovulation)
-NFP methods have typical use effectiveness rates ranging from 86% (Two-Day method) to 98% (Marquette method or symptothermal method), which is line with effectiveness rates of birth control pills (91% effective)
-In order to be most successful with natural family planning, a patient needs to be motivated, consistent, utilize self-control (if using for avoiding pregnancy), and it is recommended to work with a trained instructor
-Signs that your patient might be interested in NFP: she is already asking about holistic health alternatives, when counseling on hormonal contraceptives, when she stops filling or taking her hormonal contraceptive, when making family-planning-related purchases (ex. pregnancy test or condoms)
-It is CRUCIAL that we as healthcare professionals allow our patients to make TRULY informed decisions. If you prescribe hormonal contraceptives, make sure your patient knows all her medication AND non-medication options, and then she can make the right decision for her

To get a one-page hand-out with the resources mentioned in this episode: http://podcast.nfppharmacist.com/31

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