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Pelvic health is an abscence of pelvic floor and core dysfunction. Poor pelvic health can include a number of conditions such as bladder & bowel incontinence, urgency, frequency, vaginal & rectal prolapse, chronic pelvic pain, constipation, abdominal separation, lower back pain and coccyx pain.

This is not a problem for your specialist physiotherapist. The initial assessment will cover all the areas relating to pelvic health. You can discuss your specific problem(s) and then your physiotherapist will ask you further specific questions to screen the other areas that may be affected or may be causing your symptoms. If you have multiple symptoms and if multiple pelvic organs are affected, you may require longer appointments for treatment and intervention (the standard follow-up appointment duration is 30 minutes).

Pelvic health physiotherapy always begins with an initial assessment (approximately 1 hour duration) and then follows on with a series of treatments and home programmes. It is essential that you are pro-active in your rehabilitation, it's what you do day-to-day that makes the difference. Your physiotherapist is there to guide you and provide treatment and advice where necessary. As a general rule, physiotherapy intervention usually lasts between 3-6 months. The more complex the problem, the more likely it will take longer to achieve your health goals. If you are attending physiotherapy as a preventative measure, you are possibly looking at 6-12 weeks of intervention. Some women will need to attend regularly such as weekly or fortnightly. Others will only need to come in every 4-6 weeks. As you progress through the rehabilitation journey, you will need physiotherapy intervention in clinic less often, and so we can extend the time between appointments. Some ladies like to keep on top of their pelvic health with annual or bi-annual reviews with their physiotherapist.

When pelvic floor dysfunction is likely the cause of your problem, an internal pelvic exam is very useful. However, it is not essential in the first appointment. If you feel nervous and would like time to think about this option, you can take all the time you need. A pelvic exam tells your physiotherapist a lot about how you are squeezing your pelvic floor muscles, your technique, whether you can release or if you are holding tension, and also what bespoke training programme you will be able to manage at home. You are the leader in your pelvic exam and remain in control the whole way through. Our physiotherapists will listen to you and if at any time you need to pause or stop, for whatever reason, you can just say so. We are here to help you and we want to do the best for you.

The presence of pelvic health problems is not essential for you to book an appointment. As the saying goes, "prevention is better than a cure". Being pro-active in your health and well-being is fundamental to preventing problems in the future. We offer a Women's Wellbeing Screening appointment which covers all the necessary pelvic health areas. We screen for problems you may not have been aware of and provide a tailor-made home treatment plan to help you maintain and even improve your pelvic health, plus avoid problems in the future. Remember that we often accept poor pelvic health without realising that what we are experiencing is actually abnormal. For example, if you are visiting the toilet every hour to pass urine, you have bladder frequency. If you leak a little bit with a big sneeze when your bladder is full, you have stress incontinence, even if you've had a number of children - this is a symptom of poor pelvic health and never normal.

We no longer provide health insurance invoices for companies that require direct invoicing from practitioners. The only option we provide is that you pay-up-front for your appointment and then we send you a full receipt which you can send to your insurance provider in order to receive a refund (part or whole, depending on your policy). Companies like BUPA, AVIVA and AXXAPPP do not usually accept this option. However, Benenden, Simply Health, Cash4Health and others do accept this 'cash back' option. If your company has given you an authorisation code, it's likely that you will need to use physiotherapy services at Spire, Nuffield, Sancta Maria or St Joseph's Hospital.