Do future healthcare professionals have adequate knowledge about risk factors for stress urinary incontinence in women?

BACKGROUND: Stress urinary incontinence worsens living conditions as far as the occupational, social, mental, physical and sexual aspects of a woman’s life. Despite its real impact on the everyday lives of millions of women around the world, this problem is still disregarded and treated only as a discomfort associated with personal hygiene. Could this be due to negligence on the part of medical personnel in this matter and perhaps this lack of knowledge and proper information intended for women with stress urinary incontinence? Implementing educational activities to increase knowledge about urinary incontinence will translate into better educated women and earlier implementation of urinary incontinence treatment in the future. To properly educate women at risk of urinary incontinence, one needs to be familiar with the condition, in particular the risk factors for its development. The purpose of the study was to evaluate the degree of knowledge of students graduating from medical faculties have regarding risk factors for stress urinary incontinence in women and assess where the students’ knowledge of this problem came from. METHODS: The research involved 1581 final year students of medical faculties: nursing and midwifery (258), medicine (432), physiotherapy (402) and other medical (489). The author’s survey was used for the research. The chi(2) test was used for analysis. RESULTS: Students in faculties of nursing and midwifery, general medicine, physiotherapy, and other medical faculties could correctly list stress urinary incontinence risk factors in 88.8%, 81.7%, 74.4% and 51.9% of their answers respectively (p < 0.01). The most frequently mentioned source of knowledge about stress urinary incontinence was higher level education in 82.6%, 89.8%, 90.0% and 34.4% of the respective groups’ replies (p < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: Nursing and midwifery students had the greatest theoretical knowledge of stress urinary incontinence, and lesser knowledge was found among general medicine students, while physiotherapy students and students of other medical faculties had the least theoretical knowledge about risk factors for urinary incontinence. It is advisable that more emphasis be placed on educating students about stress urinary incontinence due to their insufficient knowledge, in particular for future doctors and physiotherapists who will have direct contact with patients.