Investigating Mortality and Morbidity Associated with Urinary Incontinence During Older Women’s Secondary Care Admissions (U-INconti) and Exploring Nurses Experiences of Delivering Related Care
Over a third of older women (55 years and older) report experiencing difficulty with their urinary continence in normally daily life. This occurs to different degrees of severity. Urinary incontinence (UI) can lead to a reduction in a women’s quality of life, reduced psychological health, lack of confidence, feeling of reduced sexuality and societal exclusion. Some women report feeling embarrassment and a sense of taboo related to their continence issues and may not seek help or discuss the matter with others including their partners.
The majority of UI research is in community rather than secondary care settings and in community populations UI is not reportedly linked with early death or worsening health. Currently it is not clear how many older women experience UI during a hospital admission or which disease areas, or clinical problems increase the likelihood of them experiencing UI. We also do not know whether there is a link between UI and early death or health problems (e.g. frailty or pressure ulcers) for these women. There is also a lack of understanding regrading secondary care nurses views, knowledge and perceptions of UI in older women and how they manage and deliver related care. The U-Conti project aims to fill in the gaps in our knowledge of these important issues, leading to future development of educational material to support nurses delivering care to these women.
Methods
This is a mixed methods study to determine mortality, morbidities and prevalence and incidence of urinary incontinence (UI) in older women (55 years and over) during a secondary care admission, and to explore the views, knowledge and perceptions of nurses delivering women’s care.
The study has three phases:
Phase 1: Identifying current gaps in the literature related to older women experiencing UI during an in-patient admission will be determined through a scoping review. This will be addressed through a scoping review.
Phase 2: The prevalence and incidence of UI in older women during admission to hospital will be determined. Clinical conditions most likely associated with UI and any associations between UI and death will be determined using electronic in-patient records.
Phase 3: To gain an understanding of nurses views, knowledge and perceptions of providing care for older women with UI within secondary care qualitative interviews will be undertaken with secondary care nurses.
Potential outputs:
Based on an evaluation of self-management, women’s experiences and the expertise of healthcare professionals working in the field, our team (Fu et.al. 2020) previously produced a self-management guide to support older women with managing their UI. Based on the findings of the U-INConti study the intervention may be suitable to adapt as an education resource for adult general nurses caring for patients within a secondary care in-patient setting. Traditionally education related to UI for secondary care nurses has been minimal. There are frequent missed opportunities for nurses to discuss the problem with women and offer support, sign posting to resources and help.
Educating these nurses to build their confidence and provide them with information could improve the lives of women who may not previously have thought to seek help or put in place self- management techniques.
References:
“I’m so pleased that you are doing this research my poor mum really suffers from this and it rules her life. It seems like an invisible problem”
Anonymous male healthcare professional
Team:
Professor Heather Iles-Smith, Professor of Nursing, University of Salford and Northern Care Alliance NHS Group
Dr Yu (Maggie) Fu, Senior Research Associate,NIHR ARC AHSN Fellow, Population Health Sciences Institute, University of Newcastle. (Yu.Fu@newcastle.ac.uk)
Robyn Mccarthy, Research Assistant, School of Health and Society, University of Salford
Professor Linda McGowan, Leadership Chair-Applied Health Research, Faculty of Medicine and Health, University of Leeds. (L.McGowan@leeds.ac.uk)
Research Groups:
CSHR
KHP
Long-term conditions and Digital Health and evidence based practice
Funder: Health Education England