Addressing urinary incontinence with educational continence-care competencies

This article is a report of a task force formed from a discussion group hosted by the American Nurses Association on the AHCPR Guidelines on Urinary Incontinence. The need to standardize content related to bladder incontinence to be used in curriculums was identified as an initial step in implementing the guidelines. A task force was formed to develop educational competencies to be used by schools in identifying content that should be addressed at various levels of preparation. Although special training is needed when continence care is a significant part of a nurse's practice, it is expected that by using the educational competencies, schools will produce graduates at the basic level able to provide beginning continence care and graduate nurses able to address advanced incontinence problems.