How to get referred to the urogynaecology service
There are three ways for you to access our urogynaecology service:
- You can ask your GP to refer you to our service
- If you are seeing a consultant at the hospital they may refer you
- If you are post-natal your midwife can also refer you
For any urogynaecology enquiries please call 0113 20 66252 (Monday to Friday 8.00 am to 4.00 pm).
Your referral
The Urogynaecology team will review your referral and may feel it is most appropriate for you to see a pelvic health physiotherapist as a first line of treatment.
Your first physiotherapy session will be via a small, informal online session (Microsoft Teams) with a group of up to 12 ladies who have similar problems to yourself and led by a member of the urogynaecology pelvic health team.
In the group we will discuss the causes of bladder and prolapse symptoms, including activities and lifestyle habits which may make your symptoms worse. You will also be taught some simple exercises to help improve your symptoms, and advice to help yourself.
During the session the health care professional will discuss options for 1:1 face to face appointments going forwards. There will also be an opportunity to ask questions privately at the end of the session.
Your physiotherapy referral
You might be wondering why you’re here?
You’ve been given this group appointment, and you may have been referred for any urinary, bowel or prolapse symptoms, and physiotherapy is considered to be the first line treatment for the aforementioned symptoms
We have found that it’s really helpful for patients to attend this group session, in order to learn the information of what you can be doing in the meantime ahead of the face-to-face appointment
We will give you strategies that you can go away and you can work on to hopefully improve your symptoms
After this session a face-to-face appointment will automatically be generated, and at that session you’ll have an opportunity to go through your personal symptoms, and have a vaginal examination to assess your pelvic floor and create a personalised exercise program
So today we’re going to give you some tips and tricks with things to work on whilst waiting on that appointment, we’ll go through tips on improving your symptoms and just some general lifestyle advice that may help you
And as we have said you will be generated a one to one appointment that will include that subjective assessment of your symptoms, a vaginal assessment and personal advice according to your symptoms
So today we’re going to go through a team introduction, the anatomy, the types of prolapse, bladder and bowel function, types of incontinence for bladder and for bowels, fluids and diet advice, some pelvic floor exercises, what they are and how many you should be doing, and some physiotherapy treatment
So our team is made up of something called a multi-disciplinary team and that consists of the specialist nurses, the Urogynaecology Consultants, specialist physiotherapists and the urodynamics team.
As physiotherapy, we treat a multitude of symptoms including your bladder symptoms – so we’ll go a little bit deeper later on in this video regarding stress urge and both stress and urge incontinence. Bowel symptoms including bowel incontinence and urgency and prolapse symptoms but we also treat painful sexual intercourse, vaginal pain and spasms, sexual dysfunction and we work really closely with the clinical nurse specialists and the Urogynaecology Consultants so if we feel you need the input from their specialist areas then we can also try and arrange them appointments as well.