What Do Women Think of Contraception Counseling in the Emergency Department?

As emergency departments (EDs) increasingly provide “safety net” care for perceived nonemergencies, the concept of what constitutes “emergency medicine” is evolving. Screening for domestic violence and sexually transmitted infections has become customary, while provision of contraception or contraceptive counseling remains less common. Significant barriers to accessing contraception services and healthcare disparately affect certain populations, resulting in consequences such as unintended pregnancies. To ascertain whether ED-based contraception services would be viewed as acceptable, researchers interviewed an intentionally ethnically diverse group of 37 reproductive-aged women seen in the ED (with unrelated concerns) about how they would …