Clinical Trial: Evaluation of a Bowel and Bladder Health Management Program for Individuals With Spinal Cord Injury (SCI)

Study Status: Completed
Recruit Status: Completed
Study Type: Interventional



Official Title: Applying Health Mechanics to Enhance Bowel and Bladder Health for Persons With SCI

Brief Summary:

This study will look at the use of a telehealth version of a self management program in individuals with both new onset and chronic traumatic spinal cord injuries. The program is called Health Mechanics. It is meant to enhance self management skills related to neurogenic bladder and bowel management to prevent associated problems and improve Quality of Life (QOL). This program is based on the needs and strengths of individuals with SCI. It focuses on enhancing skills, encouraging positive health behaviors, empowering people within their own environments, and recognizing that people differ in their resources and abilities. The skills that are part of the intervention are: attitude, self-monitoring, problem-solving, communication, organization and stress management. This study will address those skills in the context of bladder and bowel health, with expectations that these skills to be useful in other areas of life as well.

The investigators hypothesize that individuals in the Health Mechanics intervention group will:

  • show greater improvements in problem solving skills, healthy attitudes about disability and knowledge of SCI management skills than will the control group
  • have greater adherence to recommended bladder and bowel management behaviors than the control group
  • have fewer bladder and bowel complications than the control group
  • have higher levels of QOL than the control group

In other words, this study will investigate the effectiveness of a telehealth version of Health Mechanics to enhance self-management skills related to neurogenic bladder and bowel management in an attempt to prevent associated complications and improve QOL.