Holistic Approach for Pelvic Floor Disorders and Pain in Women: the Impact on Function, Psychosocial, and Physical Outcomes

Introduction: Through observation, informal interviews with pelvic floor rehabilitation experts and occupational therapists, and a literature review, a need for interventions that address the multifactorial etiologies of women with pelvic floor disorders, especially when diagnosed with urinary incontinence and chronic pelvic pain and the long-lasting symptoms associated with the diagnoses (Bittelbrunn et al., 2023; Frawley et al., 2017; Katz et al., 2021; Srinivasan et al., 2020). Without access to interventions and outcome measures that address the psychosocial, functional, and physical symptoms and causes, therapists struggle to help clients achieve their goals in reasonable periods of time. Objective: To create an accessible and feasible resource manual for clinicians and students, as well as establish evidence-based interventions, outcome measures, and an understanding of holistic approach to pelvic floor compared to the biomechanical approach, a literature review was conducted. A 14-week observation was completed at Benchmark Physical Therapy to gain a better understanding of the current interventions and outcome measures used in outpatient pelvic floor rehabilitation. During this time, a resource manual was developed alongside clinicians. To increase usage and accessibility of information, a simple handout was created and disseminated. Resulting Product: A comprehensive resource manual was developed to address the gap in knowledge in practicing clinicians and students to hopefully achieve the goal of providing additional resources for treating clients in the outpatient setting. Collaboration and discussion with occupational therapists and physical therapists helped to identify priorities for the resources disseminated. Through the dissemination to clinicians, students completing clinical requirements for OTD and DPT programs will have access to the resource manual, providing an evidence-based treatment planning tool. Conclusion: This resource manual will allow clinicians to have access to interventions using a holistic approach that can address the additional factors of their clients’ diagnoses and provide suggestions for additional outcome measures to track the progression of psychosocial, functional, and physical symptoms. The offerings from the manual will also help to provide resources for students entering clinical experiences in the pelvic floor setting to better prepare them for treatment planning, evaluations, and interactions with clients.