Risk and safety management in infertility and assisted reproductive technology (ART): from the doctor's office to the ART procedure.

Risk and safety management (RSM) is receiving increasing attention in medicine, with the goals of reducing medical error and increasing quality of care. The principles and tools of RSM can and should be applied to assisted reproductive technology (ART), a field that has already made significant progress in reducing the undesirable and sometimes dangerous consequences of treatment. ART is a prime area of medicine to contribute and help to lead the application of RSM and patient safety because it has been ahead of many other fields of medicine in standardizing treatment, certifying and auditing practitioners, and reporting standardized outcomes, and because treatments are applied to otherwise healthy individuals where exposure to risk may be less acceptable.