Funding outcome

The internet, television, and social media are playing an increasing role in information provision for medical health. Urogynecology is rapidly growing field that clinically manages women with pelvic floor disorders including urinary and fecal incontinence and pelvic organ prolapse. It is an medical area that is seldom discussed in public. Many women do not seek help due to embarrassment, myths regarding cause, uncertainty regarding treatment options, and ease of access to menstrual pads. With the increasing aging population, and improved health advocacy for women, we are seeing rising demand for urogynecologic care. Women often have to wait over a year to access care for their pelvic floor problems. We feel it would be helpful to provide more online educational tools locally to women that have these health concerns or are accessing care at the Lois Hole Hospital for Women. This would eventually help to streamline some of the care and possibly shorten wait-times. The goals of our study are to: determine how comfortable women are using different media, and to ascertain the sources of health information that women have accessed regarding their incontinence or pelvic floor problems prior to coming to our clinic. By determining how women obtain their health information and how comfortable they are with tools such as smart phone apps, ipads, social media, vodcasts, and online teaching tools, we can then tailor our patient education methods to better serve our patient needs.