Barriers to help seeking in people with urinary symptoms

Background. Urinary incontinence is a common problem but, for those experie ncing significant clinical symptoms, help seeking has been reported to be a s low as 20%. As many of these people could be helped by simple interventio ns, there is a clear need to identify barriers to help seeking and develop interventions to overcome these barriers. Objectives. This study explores help-seeking behaviour in people with urina ry symptoms such as leakage, frequency, nocturia and urgency in order to id entify barriers to service use. Method. Thirty-one people who either had ag reed to treatment as pa rt of a n intervention study or who were receiving treatment at a hospital out-pati ent clinic for their urinary problems took part in unstructured, taped inte rviews. Respondents were questioned about their views on help seeking for u rinary problems and their personal experiences of consultations. The data w ere transcribed, coded and thematic analysis carried out. Results. The most common theme to emerge was a lack of knowledge of the con dition and of available treatments. Urinary symptoms frequently were consid ered a normal part of ageing or childbirth, or it was felt that these types of symptoms were inappropriate for medical intervention. Older people were not only more likely to accept symptoms but were also less likely to want to bother their GP. Patients did not always communicate their concerns abou t urinary symptoms to their GP, through either embarrassment or misconcepti ons of what is a 'medical problem'. Conclusions. There is a clear need for health education and health promotio n in this area. Future work should explore professionals' knowledge and vie ws of these types of conditions with the aim of providing guidelines for ma nagement in primary care.