Development and Feasibility Testing of a Group-based PFMT Programme for Antenatal Women in Nanjing City in China

This study is to co-design and assess the practicality of group-based Pelvic floor muscle training (PFMT) programme in pregnant women.

PFMT has been recommended as the first-line treatment for stress urinary incontinence and the other types of urinary incontinence (UI), however, it was not well implemented in many countries due the lack of human resource and financial support. Compared to individual PFMT supervision, which is commonly conducted in hospital with additional fees, delivering PFMT in groups can help more women. Therefore, this study is to codesign and investigate the feasibility of group-based PFMT programme.

The first phase is to co-design the group-based PFMT programme: The stakeholders will be involved in this phase. The stakeholder development group will purposively sample both health professionals and pregnant women with or without UI. The stakeholder development group members will include the principal researcher, two pregnant women without UI, two pregnant women with a history of UI, two midwives (one of the midwives will help the principal researcher to deliver the training session), two physiotherapists. Data from group meetings will be digitally audio-recorded following consent and notes will be taken during the meeting. The data will be analyzed to identify the content and mode of delivery of the group-based PFMT programme along with potential barriers and facilitators.

The second phase is implementation and evaluation of the group-based PFMT programme (randomised controlled feasibility study): Participants will be randomized into two groups, intervention and control group. The control group gets standard care at the hospital. The interventional group gets supervised group-based PFMT. The intervention will be teaching the participants to do PFMT in groups. The intervention will help women to identify their pelvic floor muscles and then guide them how to contract the pelvic floor muscle correctly (the detail of the intervention will be discussed and determined in phase 1 of this project). The core outcome measures are likely to include self-reported UI, which is commonly used in studies and is able to evaluate the effectiveness of PFMT intervention in pregnant women, and UI severity which may be assessed by ICIQ-SF (a validated questionnaire which both assesses the severity of urinary loss and quality of life impact). The adherence to the programme may be assessed by attendance records from the group-based training sessions and completion of a training diary which includes the frequency and duration the participants self-report doing the exercises. The training diary will be submitted to the principal researcher after the training sessions.

Inclusion criteria

• Nulliparous women who are aged 18 years and older;
• Gestational ages of 19-24 weeks;
• With or without the symptom of UI;
• Singleton fetus
• Capable of giving valid informed consent

Exclusion criteria

• Women with pregnancy complications or urine tract infection
• Women with previous UI symptoms before pregnancy
• High risk of preterm labour
• Women with previous urogenital surgery or diseases which may interfere with pelvic floor muscle strength, for example, pelvic organ prolapse, neurological disorders, diabetes.