Illustrative quotes for health professionals
| No. | Quote and participant ID |
| 1 | ‘Some of the older ladies have put up with the symptoms for a lot longer and not wanted to…they’ve found it embarrassing or they’ve thought it’s just something that you had to put up with age.’ (HP8, clinical nurse specialist, urogynaecology department) |
| 2 | ‘We can accept, basically, any referral.’ (HP2, nurse, continence clinic) |
| 3 | ‘It is an embarrassing situation, and a lot of people don't want to go to another person and have to admit to it, and then ask them to refer. So we do fiercely defend our self-referral policy. There’s very few services where you can self-refer, but continence is one.’ (HP3, healthcare assistant, continence clinic) |
| 4 | ‘But they do feel that they get a lot off their chest when they come and speak to us. And, you know, they are always pleased to hear that they’re not the only ones who suffer with it and it’s not unusual. Some of the appointments are like a counselling kind of appointment where they’re so upset and fed up.’ (HP8, nurse specialist, urogynaecology department) |
| 5 | ‘I think that you are passionate about what you’re doing and you’re willing to work with them to a common goal, which I can identify is the problem, and if you do x, y and z on my advice, we can aim to achieve, and if we’re struggling there’s always somewhere else I can go. And you find that because it is such a personal thing, then they’re quite relieved and they will join you on the journey, I don’t find many people who haven’t done what I’ve asked.’ (HP1, nurse, continence clinic) |
| 6 | ‘I'll tell my patients, yeah, I've been incontinent, I know what it feels like. Because then, it will alter the dynamics quite often. You choose your patient, you know, not with all of them. But with some of them where I think that’s going to give me what I need, so that I can work with them, then yeah, I'll tell them.’ (HP3, healthcare assistant, continence clinic) |
| 7 | ‘I mean we know that 40 per cent of women have got incorrect pelvic floor technique. So, that’s quite a lot of women that are doing pelvic floor exercises wrong.’ (HP5, physiotherapist, urogynaecology department) |
| 8 | ‘Some of them, they don’t want to stop drinking a caffeinated tea because they’ve drunk that all their life and they don’t want to change their habits.’ (HP5, physiotherapist, urogynaecology department) |