Perinatal Pelvic Health Service
The NHS Long Term Plan (2019) includes a commitment for NHS England to:
improve access to postnatal physiotherapy to support women who need it to recover from birth
and ensure that:
all women have access to multidisciplinary pelvic health clinics and pathways across England.
The Perinatal Pelvic Health Service is nationally driven by NHS England, to improve the prevention, identification and time to access treatment for pelvic floor dysfunction (PFD) symptoms during pregnancy and the childbearing year. PFD includes symptoms of bladder and bowel incontinence, pelvic organ prolapses and vaginal and sexual health concerns such as dyspareunia (painful sex).
A new service launches in the North East and North Cumbria in September 2024, to provide pelvic health support to women in pregnancy and up to one year postnatally.
This service is being developed with service users with lived experience, primary care and specialised clinical staff.
What are the features and benefits of the new service?
- Routine antenatal education for all women about pelvic floor dysfunction
- Ensuring adoption and adherence by women to pelvic floor muscle training throughout pregnancy
- To offer a baseline self-assessment of pelvic health in early pregnancy
- Additional support provided for those at higher risk
- Provision of quality information and training to all staff about pelvic health common issues, symptoms and how to access support
- Provision of a single point of access or standardised multiple points of access across the system for women to self-refer or health professionals to refer for common pelvic floor problems
- Reducing referral to treatment times by streamlining referral processes
- Increasing establishment of specialist women’s health physiotherapists to better meet demand
- Leadership in the local planning and provision of services aimed to improve perinatal pelvic health care
Current Perinatal Pelvic Health Service Project Team tasks
- Pathway development
- Referral criteria
- Service User Survey circulation and collation of feedback for service implementation and improvement
- Service policy, guidelines and process development (e.g. complex tears and birth reflections, Bladder care etc.)
- Identification and delivery of standardised, specialist Pelvic Health staff training. This includes new staff induction and future staff core training support
- Preparing a standardised electronic template for perinatal pelvic health data to ensure KPIs are captured for national and local dashboards (including one-stop-clinic audits)
- Development of a standardised approach to patient information provision
- Modelling of a standardised staffing structure for each trusts service
- Development a co-produced service model for all the population