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The Concerns of Community-Dwelling Older Women Living with Urinary Incontinence: Qualitative Research

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Abstract

Introduction and Hypothesis

The world including Iran is facing population aging. Urinary incontinence (UI) is one of the most common health concerns of older women that can be accompanied by an increased sense of loneliness, social restrictions, and disruption in activities of daily living in addition to the regular challenges of old age. This study was aimed at explaining the concerns of community-dwelling older women living with UI.

Methods

This study used the conventional, qualitative, content analysis approach with purposive sampling. Twenty interviews were conducted with 18 participants, including 15 community-dwelling older women with UI and three family members (a husband and two daughters), over the span of 14 months (from August 2021 to October 2022). The data were collected via semi-structured, face-to-face interviews until data saturation was achieved, and were analyzed using Graneheim and Lundman’s method.

Results

The findings revealed that the concerns of older women with UI include the impasse of UI, being powerless in life, distorted social identity, and marital frustration, which fell under the main theme of sense of inadequacy.

Conclusions

Recognizing the concerns of older women with UI can make health care teams more sensitive to the importance of resolving these concerns and can offer some insight into how best to provide targeted training, support, and counseling services at individual, family, and society levels, to eventually resolve the older adult’s sense of inadequacy.

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Data availability

The datasets generated and analyzed during the current study are not publicly available owing to an agreement with the participants on the confidentiality of the data, but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This research is part of a doctoral dissertation. The authors wish to express their gratitude to the Deputy of Research of Semnan and Rofiedeh Rehabilitation Hospital for supporting this project.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Student Research Committee, Semnan University of Medical Sciences, Semnan, Iran

    Elnaz Talebi

  2. Nursing Care Research Center, Semnan University of Medical Sciences, Semnan, 3513138111, Iran

    Monir Nobahar & Mohammad Reza Asgari

  3. Department of Nursing, Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery, Semnan University of Medical Sciences, Semnan, Iran

    Monir Nobahar & Mohammad Reza Asgari

  4. Iranian Research Center On Aging, University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences, Tehran, Iran

    Mahshid Foroughan

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Contributions

All authors have accepted responsibility for the entire content of this manuscript and approved its submission.

E.T.: conceptualization, methodology, investigation, data curation, writing the original draft, writing review and editing; M.N.: conceptualization, methodology, investigation, data curation, writing the original draft, writing review and editing, supervision, project administration; M.F.: conceptualization, data curation, writing the original draft, writing review and editing; M.R.A.: conceptualization, data curation, writing the original draft, writing review and editing.

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Correspondence to Monir Nobahar.

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Talebi, E., Nobahar, M., Foroughan, M. et al. The Concerns of Community-Dwelling Older Women Living with Urinary Incontinence: Qualitative Research. Int Urogynecol J (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00192-024-05810-7

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