(025) DEVELOPING AND TESTING AN ONLINE PRIMARY CARE TOOLKIT FOR COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT OF VULVODYNIA
Authors: Hunker K E , Altas M , Goldsmith K M , Farrell J E , Bouchard K N 
Published: June 2024

Introduction

Vulvodynia is a chronic vulvar pain condition that affects 8-10% of women and people with vulvas. Despite its prevalence, healthcare providers (HCPs) often lack awareness, knowledge, and confidence in managing vulvodynia. This knowledge gap can lead to diagnostic delays, misdiagnoses, and reflex referrals to specialists. Moreover, research shows that patients feel invalidated in healthcare settings and perceive that their HCPs’ lack of vulvodynia awareness negatively impacts their care. Thus, there is a need for educational resources about vulvodynia that can be applied in healthcare settings. Specifically, community-based primary care providers could greatly benefit from vulvodynia resources because they are often a point of entry into the healthcare system.

Objective

To develop and test a new, online toolkit tailored to supporting community-based primary care providers with the assessment, diagnosis, and management of vulvodynia. In this pilot study, we sought to evaluate the adoption, acceptability, and preliminary efficacy of the vulvodynia toolkit in a pilot sample of community-based family physicians.

Methods

A working group of HCPs (family physicians, gynecologists, physiotherapist, psychologists) and patient partners with vulvodynia expertise developed the toolkit. The toolkit was designed in an online, modular format that could be integrated into short healthcare visits. A sample of 19 family physicians completed online surveys before and after piloting the toolkit in their community practice for 6 months. Adoption was measured in the post-toolkit survey by assessing the frequency and timing of toolkit use during the pilot period. Acceptability was measured in the post-toolkit survey by assessing physicians’ satisfaction with the toolkit content and quality. Preliminary efficacy was assessed by comparing physicians’ self-reported level of confidence with diagnosing, treating, and supporting patients with vulvodynia before and after the pilot period.

Results

Adoption. During the pilot period, physicians used the toolkit in advance of patient appointments (52.6%), during patient appointments (5.3%), or used a combination of both timepoints (42.1%). Over the 6-month pilot period, physicians used the toolkit an average of 2.61 times (SD = 1.50) in advance of seeing patients and 1.63 times (SD = 2.19) during patient appointments. Acceptability. Most physicians reported that they were satisfied or very satisfied with the toolkit overall (79.0%) and that it contained the right amount of information (68.4%). On average, the physicians rated their likelihood of recommending the toolkit to a colleague as 8/10 (SD = 1.75). Preliminary efficacy. Using repeated-measures MANOVAs, we found significant pre-toolkit to post-toolkit increases in physician’s confidence for diagnosing vulvodynia, p = .003, ηp 2 = .59, treating vulvodynia, p &lt; .001, ηp2 = .72, and supporting patients with vulvodynia, p &lt; .001, ηp2 = .73.

Conclusions

In this pilot study, we developed and tested an online vulvodynia toolkit tailored to educating community-based primary care providers. The toolkit demonstrated high acceptability and preliminary efficacy amongst a pilot group of family physicians, with large effect sizes. The results of this study exemplify the value of tailored education for improving physicians’ confidence with managing vulvodynia in community practice and lay the foundation for upscaling this tool to a wider population of HCPs.

Disclosure

No.