Proposed Topic (Most preferred): :
HA Young Investigators Session (Projects to be presented by HA staff who had joined HA for 10 years or less)
Proposed Topic (Second preferred): :
Research and Innovations (new projects / technology / innovations / service models)
Authors (including presenting author) :
Li M, Wang HL, Ko WK, Kwong SK
Affiliation :
Department of Family Medicine & Primary Health Care in Hong Kong West Cluster
Introduction :
Urinary incontinence (UI) is not life threatening, but can impair the physical, mental, and social aspects of health. It is reported that prevalence rate of UI in women world wide ranged from 25% to 45%. Despite the high prevalence, help-seeking rate is low. Less than 50% patients would only seek medical help. It was well known that early medical help-seeking can minimize dysfunctions and reduce the long-term morbidity. So how to improve the help-seeking rate, especially to promote early diagnosis and management is very important. As some studies reported that lack of awareness and knowledge was an important factor to make early diagnosis and treatment difficult. However, current studies addressing patient’s knowledge of UI primarily focused on women presenting to specialist. Little is known about the knowledge among general female populations.
Objectives :
To explore levels of urinary incontinence (UI) knowledge among community-dwelling Hong Kong Chinese women, and the factors affecting of patients’ help-seeking behavior.
Methodology :
Chinese women with age ≥40 years attended General Out-patient Clinics between 1st May to 30th June 2022 were invited to complete the questionnaire. The questionnaire consisted of four sections: (1) demographic data, (2) knowledge of UI (UI quiz), (3) severity of UI (UDI-6) and impairment of quality of life (QOL) (IIQ‐7), (4) barriers to seek medical help. Severity of UI, impairment of QOL, knowledge of UI, and sociodemographic character were analyzed of their relationship with help-seeking behavior.
Result & Outcome :
Results
Of 351 women, 53.2% had symptoms of UI but only 25.0% symptomatic patients had consulted doctor. The UI quiz score was 6.82±2.76 (total 14) and the highest incorrect item was “Urinary incontinence is the normal aging” (incorrect rate 86.3%). The most frequent barrier for help-seeking was “The symptom is not severe and do not affect me”. Logistic regression analysis showed that UDI-6 score (adjusted OR= 1.06, P< 0.0001) and UI quiz score (adjusted OR=1.30, P=0.001) were the independent impact factors of patient’s help-seeking behavior.
Conclusion
Hong Kong Chinese women’s knowledge toward UI is not sufficient, and the consultation rate is low. Besides symptom severity, knowledge level of UI is the other independent affecting factor of patient’s help-seeking behavior. Community education on UI may encourage women to early seek help.
