Progression of Urinary Incontinence in Nursing Homes

Background: Incontinence in older people is a major nursing care problem that entails a high workload for nurses and a large burden for affected individuals. Internationally and in Austria, the availability of reliable and valid long-term nursing care data for incontinence in the nursing home setting is limited.

Methods: The Austrian repeated cross-sectional study entitled the „Prevalence Measurement of Care Problems“contains data from more than 6000 nursing home residents (2009-2013). Out of these data, nursing home residents were identified who had participated over a period of four years (2009-2012 and 2010-2013). Repeated measurement tests were used for metric data, and nonparametric tests and cross tables were used for categorical variables.

Results: Most of the 108 residents were female (85.2%) and the prevalence of urinary incontinence increased statistically by more than 10% from the first to the last measurement point. Additionally, the increase of nursing care dependency was statistically significant. The use of nursing interventions saw a statistically significant increase over the time period regarding, e.g., adaption of the environment (+36%), adaptation of clothes (+61%) and mattresses (+38%). We could not find statistically significant results, although there were increases in both frequency and volume of urinary incontinence.

Conclusions: The prevalence of urinary incontinence as well as residents’ care dependency, both factors known to influence quality of life, increased over time. In order to understand the progression of urinary incontinence in more detail (frequency, volume, etc.), further research is needed- especially longitudinal studies- focusing on consequences for the affected individuals.