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Motivations, psychosocial burdens, and decision-making modes of post-partum women with stress urinary incontinence engaging in pelvic floor physical therapy: a qualitative research

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Abstract

Introduction and hypothesis

This qualitative research explores the motivations, psychosocial burdens, and decision-making modes of post-partum women with stress urinary incontinence (SUI) engaging in pelvic floor physical therapy (PFPT).

Methods

This study was conducted face-to-face in a treatment room using qualitative semi-structured interviews with post-partum women who received PFPT for SUI between May and October 2022. Participant interviews were transcribed verbatim and thematically analyzed using NVivo software, which is most commonly used for qualitative data analysis.

Results

Themes that impacted participants’ decisions to receive PFPT included avoiding deterioration of SUI symptoms, believing that the sooner it is treated the better, being unable to adhere to home exercise programs, and dissatisfaction with quality of life. Some participants experienced psychosocial burdens when receiving PFPT, including impact on daily activities, worries about the baby, financial burdens, and uncertainty about the effect. There were two modes of decision making, which brought different experiences. Some participants preferred participant–provider shared decision making and reported effective doctor–patient communication, and striving for autonomous decisions. Other participants preferred their clinicians to decide on PFPT protocols in view of their trust in their midwives, institutional reputation, and lacking knowledge of PFPT.

Conclusions

We discovered that participants had both motivations and psychosocial burdens when receiving therapy. Some participants preferred participant–provider shared decision making, whereas others preferred their midwives to make decisions. Further more standardized studies with more robust samples are needed.

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Data Availability

The datasets used and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all the participants with stress urinary incontinence who participated in this study and thank the hospital in Shenzhen.

Funding

This work is funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (71904075); National Ministry of Education Humanities and Social Science Research Planning Fund Project (21YJAZH001); Research Foundation of Shenzhen Hospital, Southern Medical University (LCJH202001); Research Foundation of Shenzhen Hospital, Southern Medical University (PT2018GZR01). The funding body did not participate in the design of the study, data collection, analysis, interpretation of data, or in writing the manuscript.

Ethics approval for this work was granted by the Ethics Committees of Shenzhen Hospital, Southern Medical University (No. NYSZYYEC20220032).

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Author notes

  1. Jie Li and Tiantian Li contributed equally to this work, and they were joint first authors.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Nursing, Shenzhen Hospital, Southern Medical University, Number 1333, Xinhu Road, Baoan District, Shenzhen, 518101, Guangdong, China

    Jie Li, Tiantian Li, Shurong Huang, Ling Chen & Wenzhi Cai

  2. School of Nursing, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, 510515, Guangdong, China

    Jie Li & Wenzhi Cai

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  1. Jie Li
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Contributions

Jie Li: conceptualization, methodology, formal analysis, investigation, writing – original draft, writing – review and editing. Tiantian Li: conceptualization, methodology, formal analysis, investigation, writing – original draft, writing – review and editing. Shu Rong Huang: conceptualization, methodology, project coordination. Ling Chen: conceptualization, methodology. Wenzhi Cai: supervision, project administration, funding acquisition.

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Correspondence to Wenzhi Cai.

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Li, J., Li, T., Huang, S. et al. Motivations, psychosocial burdens, and decision-making modes of post-partum women with stress urinary incontinence engaging in pelvic floor physical therapy: a qualitative research. Int Urogynecol J 34, 1803–1813 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00192-023-05466-9

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