The British journal of family planning
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Practice nurses have an important role in the provision of sexual health services in general practice. ⋯ Practice nurses offer a wide range of services in which the need to be able to take a sexual history and offer appropriate advice is important. There is scope to improve the provision of sexual health services by nurses in general practice, particularly in relation to services for teenagers.
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To evaluate the quality of patient information about emergency contraception on the Internet. ⋯ None of the Web sites provided complete information to patients about emergency contraception according to the quality criteria used in this study. As previous studies have shown, people need to be wary about the quality of information on the Internet.
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The Medical Devices Agency (MDA), an executive agency of the Department of Health, has responsibility for the safety of medical devices within the UK. The MDA is responsible for enforcing the European Medical Devices Directive (MDD) within the UK. Contraceptive devices such as copper-containing IUDs and condoms are regulated by the MDD, and this brief report is an introduction to it.
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Depo Provera (medroxyprogesterone acetate, DMPA) when given as 150 mg by deep intramuscular injection every 12 calendar weeks (84 days+5 days), is a highly effective contraceptive with a very low failure rate comparable to modern copper IUDs and lower than many other methods. It should be available as a first line method to all who wish to make an informed choice about reversible methods of contraception. Pre-use counselling is essential to minimise the effect of menstrual change which occurs in most patients. ⋯ The method has had a particularly bad public image, which naturally makes potential users anxious and subject to misinformation from poorly informed or biased sources. Also, it is temporarily irreversible during its three months duration, so the duration of any problems or anxieties resulting from side effects may be longer than for other methods. It is of paramount importance that easily understood, accurate patient information leaflets are available, since biased and inaccurate information is readily available from women's magazines, perpetuating the myths surrounding the method.