KEY POINTS:
My job
Name: Jennifer Kenny
Age: Late 40s
Role: Embryologist with Fertility Plus at Green Lane Clinical Centre
Working hours: 8.30am to 5pm, Monday to Friday with one rostered weekend each month
Starting salary: $45K.
Qualification: MSc
Describe what you do
I work in the IVF laboratory at Fertility Plus. The job involves meeting couples who are coming to the clinic for treatment. We spend time explaining what will happen when they come for their IVF cycle.
I am involved in the culturing of embryos from the day the eggs are collected in theatre, through the addition of sperm to the eggs, until a developing embryo is transferred back to the woman.
The embryos are usually cultured in the IVF laboratory for between three and five days and we talk with the couples about their embryo development over this time. Each year I would be involved with 60 to 70 IVF cycles. We do have lots of patient contact and that is one of the things that I really like about the job. It is a seven-day-a-week job so you have to like working weekends.
Your work history?
After finishing university I worked in hospital laboratories, both here and in Australia, in cytogenetics, where we tested for chromosome abnormalities. From there I became interested in embryology and IVF.
I have been working as an embryologist for the last 12 years.
How successful is IVF?
This is very dependent on the reason for infertility. It is generally accepted that if people are having problems getting pregnant, a third will be due to a male factor, a third will be due to a female factor and the other third will be a combination of both male and female factors.
When new technology addresses a particular problem, there can be a big jump in success. We saw this in the early 1990s with ICSI (Intra Cytoplasmic Sperm Injection), which enabled us to inject single sperm into eggs to address the problem of low sperm count or poor mobility of sperm. This made a significant difference to success with IVF for couples where male infertility was an issue.
About half of the IVF work that we do now involves ICSI.
For anyone having trouble conceiving, a First Specialist Appointment (FSA) is available through the Auckland District Health Board for New Zealand residents where the woman is a non-smoker and less than 40 years of age.
At this FSA, you are scored under a nationwide system. If you gain enough points, you are entitled to have two publicly funded cycles of IVF. If people use their public funding and haven't become pregnant or they want to have another baby, their only option in New Zealand is private treatment, which is expensive.
What factors affect fertility?
Not everyone realises that conception is easier when you're younger. The factor which has the greatest effect on pregnancy rate with IVF is probably a woman's age. There are many other factors but only a few that we have control over. Smoking has been demonstrated to decrease chances of conception. There is also evidence that overweight women may take longer to conceive.
What sort of training do you need?
You need a degree, preferably in the biological sciences, to begin training. Most of the skills you need for embryology are learned on the job. Masters degrees are available overseas in embryology now, but these give mostly theoretical training.
Why is your job important?
I feel this makes a real difference to a lot of people's lives. I also find it intellectually stimulating as there is a lot of research that is always adding to our understanding of reproduction and IVF. It would be a perfect job if everyone that came through got pregnant but unfortunately that doesn't happen. The people that stick in my mind are the couples who have been trying for many years to have children and then finally achieve this with IVF.
What would you like to be doing in five years?
I would like to still be involved in embryology. It is an area that is always changing as more understanding of reproductive health and embryo culture emerges.
Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD) of embryos for inherited genetic diseases is the most recent new technology. In the next five years we will be doing more of this for affected families.
Advice to someone wanting to do same thing?
I would advise anyone to contact an IVF clinic to talk to the people there.
