CRRC Blog

Before joining BPAS, I developed an interest in audit and research, which grew during my time as a Telemedical Nurse/Midwife Practitioner (NMP) at BPAS and later as a Lead Nurse/Midwife (LNM). I have always been curious about how healthcare works, why things happen the way they do, and how to improve patient care and outcomes. I am Vice Chair of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) Women’s Health Forum Committee, and as a group we work to identify and address gaps in women’s health. Existing research is often the foundation of these projects, but this work led to wanting to contribute to new research.

Our blog will share insight into new ideas and research that furthers access to evidence-based reproductive healthcare and choices – primarily in areas related to abortion, contraception, and STI testing.

Pain is often reported as one of the worst aspects of a medical abortion, but, as mentioned in a previous BPAS blog,  we don’t have the best evidence on how to manage it. Adequate counselling and accurate management of expectations have been identified as being linked to reduced anxiety during abortion and increased satisfaction with overall abortion experience.

Pain has long been a known issue in relation to medication abortion, but one which has seen little attention until relatively recently. There could be a number of reasons for this lack of attention, not least among them concerns that highlighting abortion as something that can be painful might be co-opted by those who wish to restrict pregnant people’s access to it. Stereotypical assumptions about pain in relation to female bodies may also play a part.

Medical abortion is known to be a painful process, however, there is limited evidence for how best to manage this pain. The existing data suffer from a lack of validated measures for pain during this procedure. A robust, validated tool for measuring pain during abortion would be valuable to the field both in terms of research and, potentially, clinically.