Cues to action: Pelvic floor muscle exercise compliance in women with stress urinary incontinence

✍ Scribed by Mimi L. Gallo; David R. Staskin

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1997
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 138 KB
• Volume: 16
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0733-2467
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1520-6777(1997)16:3<167::aid-nau6>3.0.co;2-c

✦ Synopsis

Pelvic floor muscle exercises are recommended as an initial treatment to women with stress urinary incontinence. This treatment is often unsuccessful because of patient noncompliance. A post-test, experimental control group design was used to examine Pender's (1992) concept of an external cue to action, an audiocassette tape, to enhance patient compliance to pelvic floor exercises.

Eighty-six women with urodynamically evaluated stress urinary incontinence participated through a Pelvic Floor Exercise Unit at a large teaching hospital. Patients received biofeedback training and written information to reinforce pelvic floor muscle exercises during a 45-min appointment with a nurse. Patients were instructed to perform the exercises for 10 min twice daily. Forty-three women randomly assigned to an experimental group received an audiocassette tape. Four to 6 weeks later all patients completed a researcherdeveloped questionnaire that was validity and reliability tested assessing pelvic floor exercise compliance.

The 43 patients (100%) who received the audiocassette tape reported compliance with ''routine'' exercises. Twenty-two of 34 patients (65%) who did not receive the tape were compliant (P ‫ס‬ 0.0003). Thirty-four of 41 patients (83%) who received the tape reported exercise compliance twice a day, while 4 of 34 patients (12%) in the control group were similarly compliant (P ‫ס‬ 0.0000).

The findings suggest adding an audiocassette tape to a pelvic floor exercise program enhances patient compliance for incontinent women compared to verbal and written instruction combined with biofeedback.