174 Chapter 8 measures and the shutdown of regular care during the COVID-19 pandemic on fertilityrelated quality of life and quality of endometriosis care. MATERIALS AND METHODS A cross-sectional cohort study was performed in the Netherlands between March 2020 and October 2020. For this study three groups of participants were approached: (1) infertility patients, (2) women with endometriosis and (3) healthcare providers in the field of fertility and/or endometriosis in the Netherlands. In the Netherlands it is very common for gynaecologists to treat both endometriosis and infertility patients. As infertility patients often present with the urgent problem of wishing to conceive and endometriosis patients have complaints and worries of a more chronic nature, both groups can give a unique insight in both current and chronic care while the patients are visiting the same outpatient clinic. The healthcare providers were included in this study to investigate whether patients and professionals shared the same views on virtual care. Ethical approval Ethical approval was granted by the institutional review board of Amsterdam UMC for the two respective locations with their own medical ethical review committee (location AMC: reference no. 20.236, approved 7 May 2020; location VUmc: reference no. 2020.264, approved 19 May 2020). Patient recruitment To maximize the response, infertility and endometriosis patients were recruited by both Amsterdam UMC, a Dutch university hospital, and by their respective national patient organizations, FREYA (www.freya.nl) and De Endometriose Stichting (www.endometriose. nl). Patients from the university hospital were approached by e-mail when they had an appointment scheduled or were enrolled on a waiting list for ART or elective surgery in Amsterdam UMC between March 2020 and June 2020. Members of both patient organizations were approached via social media, newsletters and blogposts on the websites of the respective patient organizations. Healthcare providers were contacted through the Dutch Society of Obstetrics and Gynaecology (NVOG; www.nvog.nl) as well as the Dutch Society of Fertility Physicians (VVF; www.fertiliteitsartsen.nl). Due to the recruitment via social media, it was not possible to identify unique patients eligible for inclusion. A response rate could therefore not be calculated for the participants from the patients’ organizations.
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