Bladder training may be used by cognitively intact
and motivated people with urinary incontinence
to increase the time interval between voids and to
Ms. Spencer indicated that she also wanted to
begin a bladder-training program. Two of her friends
had said it had helped them. The nurse highlighted
the need to complete a three-day bladder diary at
the outset of training (to better understand bladder
habits) and again three to four weeks later (to selfmonitor
progress). In working together to customize
a bladder training program, the nurse and patient
knew that the most important part was agreeing
on a daytime “between-void” interval. It would likely
require eight to 12 weeks for Ms. Spencer to achieve
the goal of three to four hours between voids, so
the nurse encouraged her to break that period down
into two-week targets. For Ms. Spencer, this involved
stopping her practice of preventive, hourly toilet
use and waiting for 10 minutes when she felt the
urge to urinate. The nurse taught her to complete
a maximum of five fast pelvic floor muscle contractions
as an urge deferment technique, followed by
a distraction exercise.
After six weeks, Ms. Spencer returned for a second
appointment. She reported improvement in
her ability to attain her goals of holding her pelvic
floor muscles at maximum contraction for six seconds,
and completing an additional eight fast pelvic floor
muscle contractions of one second in duration. She
admitted, however, that she found it difficult to consistently
complete four exercise cycles daily. She was
continuing with bladder training and felt better able
to defer urgency during the afternoon and evening,
but less able to do so in the morning. She had taken it
upon herself to complete a 24-hour bladder diary
to get a better sense of her current voiding pattern;
she found that two to three hours between voids
was now the norm for her in the morning and afternoon.
She had completely stopped drinking coffee
and was enjoying a hot lemon drink instead.
She felt motivated to continue with her efforts and
believed her bladder condition was improving. The
nurse encouraged her efforts and reviewed the previous
and current self-efficacy scores with her to
show her how much progress she’d made.
Ms. Spencer continued with her PFMT and bladder
training programs. Three months later, her confidence
to hold her urine had increased dramatically
from 56 as measured on her first visit to 93 at her
12-week visit. Both patient and nurse were pleased
with the results.
44 AJN ▼ January 2014 ▼ Vol. 114, No. 1 ajnonline.com
reduce the sensation of urgency. Two main components
of bladder training are urge suppression and
urge control. Urge suppression involves pausing; sitting
down, if possible; relaxing; and contracting the
pelvic floor muscles repeatedly in order to diminish
the urge to urinate, inhibit detrusor contractions, and
prevent urine loss. While waiting for the urge to subside,
patients can practice urge control techniques—
that is, they can try to distract themselves from the
urge to void by focusing instead on a problem-solving
challenge or counting backwards from 100 by nines.
After the urge to urinate has subsided, patients walk
at a normal pace to the toilet. A bladder drill procedure
imposes a progressively lengthened interval—
from five minutes to four hours, depending on patient
tolerance—between voids over the course of days or
weeks.