CARE OF THE YOUNGER PATIENT – INSTANCE
An 18-year-old girl attended a clinic two hours away from her home. A new doctor expressed surprise at the distance she had travelled, noting that she had been attending for four years. ‘I like coming here,’ the girl said. ‘I know I could go to a nearer clinic, but I first came here in a state, needing the ‘morning-after’ pill.’
Her first experience was good, and she found the staff kind and friendly. At that time she had been worried on two counts, the risk of pregnancy and the risks of the Pill. Her mother had frightened her with myths about the Pill causing breast and cervical cancer. She felt that at the clinic her anxieties had been given credence and replaced by information. Four years on she is a happy Pill user who prefers to return for her contraceptive care to the clinic where her first experience, in a crisis, was good. This girl, only 14 years at the time of her first attendance, had achieved a considerable degree of emotional maturity, being able to take responsibility into her own hands and finding the first contraceptive consultation all that she had hoped for.
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