Nurses' perception about urinary continence promotion in an elderly long term care setting

Abstract

A descriptive small scale survey was undertaken with the purpose of exploring the nurses' perceptions on the promotion of continence in a Maltese long term institution. A sample of ten female nursing officers working in female wards was selected. Both quantitative and qualitative data was collected by using a semi-structured interview schedule. Content analysis was employed to analyse the qualitative component of the data. Findings demonstrate that the nurses in this study have misconceptions about the management of incontinence and promotion of continence. Another interesting finding was that most often nurses failed to take appropriate steps towards incontinence prevention and effective continence management as they have a 'inconsistent and inaccurate' knowledge about the nature of continence promotion programmes. There appears also to be numerous restraints to successful continence promotion in the nursing residence. These are a lack of physical resources, environmental barriers, inadequate staffing, lack of qualified nurses and lack of educational preparation on continence promotion. As a result of this study recommendations are made for improvements to the present situation and for further research to be carried out.