Womens' self‐management skills for prevention and treatment of recurring urinary tract infection

BACKGROUND: The guideline on urinary tract infections (UTI) of the Dutch College of General Practitioners provides recommendations on patient‐initiated treatment and prevention of recurring UTI. AIM: To study familiarity with self‐management skills for prevention of recurring UTI amongst adult women. DESIGN AND SETTINGS: An online questionnaire was developed, based on the UTI guideline and interviews with women having recurring UTI. Pharmacists in a postgraduate education programme (N = 76) aimed to invite 10 adult women with a recurring UTI prescription to complete the questionnaire. Women were asked for informed consent to link medication record data to questionnaire data. METHOD: We calculated proportions of the scores for self‐management skills and analysed differences between age groups with chi‐square test. RESULTS: Complete questionnaires were available for 719 women (mean age 55.1 ± 18.5 years). The proportions of women 18‐50 years and women 51 years or older were 36.4% and 63.6%, respectively. Education levels of women 18‐50 years were significantly higher than those of women 51 years and older. Before consulting a general practitioner (GP) for symptoms, 32.1% of all women increased fluid intake; additionally, 15.0% used analgesics and increased fluid intake. Of all women, 33.9% searched internet for information on self‐management and 18% occasionally received a prescription for patient‐initiated treatment, half of these prescriptions for use during vacation. Cranberry was used by 47%, d‐mannose by 5% and vitamin C by 29% of all women. Awareness of different preventive behavioural measures (eg, fluid intake, washing without soap and emptying bladder after sexual intercourse) varied between 20% and 90%. CONCLUSION: Almost half of all women applied self‐management (increased fluid intake, analgesics) before consulting a GP for recurring UTI. Awareness of preventive behavioural measures for recurring UTI varied considerably. Thus, education of women about the use of analgesics and behavioural measures deserves attention.