Urinary incontinence in primary health care 2. Care routines and consequences — perception of various categories of nursing personnel and care units

Abstract

Objective — To find out whether the nursing personnel's perceptions of urine incontinence (UI) care routines and patient observations were in agreement with quality of care, and to analyse differences between nursing personnel categories and care units.

Design -A quantitative-qualitative questionnarie study.

Setting — Three different care units; a health care centre, a nursing home, and a geriatric clinic in a county in Sweden.

Subjects — 254 nurses, nursing assistants, and auxiliary nurses.Main outcome measures — Responses to questionnaire.

Results — Faulty perception of UI, diagnosis and treatment possibilities. Care routines about hygiene and integrity, and knowledge about volume frequency chart, selection and changing of pads seemed to be indulgent. Registered nurses showed slightly better results than the other groups, even if the differences were small. There were no significant differences between the care units, but the health care centre had the best total result as regards patient observations.

Conclusion — The study confirmed that the nurses used faulty procedures to achieve quality of care. The study especially highlighted the role of nurses in primary health care, but since UI is a multidisciplinary symptom it demands interest and UI qualification of all personnel groups in the primary health care team.

Key Words:

• urinary incontinence
• care routines
• patient observations
• quality of care