Professional Program Development in Natural Family Planning

Thomas W. Hilgers
1986 The Linacre Quarterly  
The field of natural family planning is changing rapidly. These changes are of particular importance to Catholic hospitals and Catholic health care facilities, since the changes are in the direction of the development of professional delivery mechanisms for natural family planning education and service programs. Because of the nature of a hospital, the physicians, administrators and those involved in quality assurance monitoring are particularly interested in services such as natural family
more » ... ning being delivered on the most professional of levels. In the past, teachers of natural family planning have not been adequately trained and the services they have provided have not always been at the level which could be considered professional. However, recent changes have occurred in this and, through the research of the Creighton University Natural Family Planning Education and Research Center, a professional education program for teachers has been developed and a professional service delivery model has been implemented! While many Catholic hospitals have "Creighton Model" programs, many more are relatively unfamiliar with these recent advances in natural family planning. It is the purpose of this paper to update the knowledge and interest in these recent advances and also to challenge Catholic health care facilities to administratively support the development of a professional natural family planning program in their facilities. From the purely pragmatic point of view, a natural family planning program has an opportunity to bring new patients into the hospital or health care facility program. It is another opportunity for the hospital to develop an outreach program into the community and to attract individuals, generally married couples with young families , to their health care facility. From a service point of view, it is exciting to see the potential 42 Linacre Quarterly
doi:10.1080/00243639.1986.11877839 fatcat:kheyiqo7jzfu3d36kpnbr4n7aa