Fecal Incontinence Among Community-Dwelling Adults in the Primary Care Setting

The following scholarly project arose in response to recognition of a gap between currently available research on prevalence, screening, and treatment for fecal incontinence in the primary care setting, and current primary care practice. The purpose of this project is to improve health literacy on this topic, offer guidance on how to have a productive conversation about the problem, and direct readers to available resources. Research over the past decade has shown that while fecal incontinence is much more common than previously imagined, patients will rarely confide their experience of fecal incontinence to their providers. Patients are reluctant to talk with their health care providers about their experience of fecal incontinence because they are ashamed to discuss the problem. This is unfortunate where in many cases fecal incontinence is readily amenable to successful treatment in the primary care setting. Primary care providers occupy an ideal position to identify those patients suffering with fecal incontinence, leverage their good patient relationships to elicit an accurate and complete history of the patient's problem, and initiate treatment for patients with mild to moderate symptoms. Unfortunately, many practitioners simply are not aware that fecal incontinence is a common problem and often fail to ask their patients questions that would elicit this information. The objectives of this project were as follows: perform a literature review on prevalence, risk factors, screening tools, and conservative treatments available to manage fecal incontinence among adults presenting in the primary care setting; synthesize the literature review into a manuscript suitable for publication; submit the manuscript for publication in an advanced practice nursing journal; create handouts directed to primary care providers and their patients summarizing same, and submit a poster presentation at the 2013 Snowbird CME Conference. A manuscript for publication has been submitted to The Nurse Practitioner: The American Journal of Primary Healthcare. A Clinical Poster Abstract has been submitted in response to the call for poster presentations at the 2013 Snowbird CME Conference.