Should patients rely on apps for contraception?
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1. Counselling Conundrum: a real question from a patient
2. Concise Conclusion: a straight-forward patient-friendly answer
3. Quick Wrap-up
Clearly, there are nuances that may not be captured in this format. The goal here is to provide you with helpful counselling tips which often draw from multiple sources or those which are not commonly accessed by busy healthcare providers serving the community.
Counselling Conundrum: "Can an app really be used as birth control?"
Concise Conclusion: Natural Cycles is an app that is approved by Health Canada to be used as contraception. It uses fertility tracking along with other information that you provide, to tell you when you'll be most fertile (so you can avoid intercourse those days). It may work as well as birth control pills, but is a bit more involved than something like an IUD which is inserted once and is very effective.
Quick Wrap-up: If the patient's goal is to avoid a medication, then this can be a great option for them. The more data, the better; at least 6 months is recommended before trusting the app's predictions.
Dive Deeper
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