10 Tips for Teachers With Urinary Incontinence
Standing up in front of a classroom teaching all day can make anyone need to urinate. For teachers with urinary incontinence, however, waiting for the end of the day, or even a scheduled break between classes, may not be sufficient to prevent embarrassment.
In an Occupational Medicine study on incontinence in the workplace generally, 88% of employed women experiencing the greatest severity of urinary incontinence symptoms reported a subsequent negative impact on their ability to concentrate, perform physical activities and complete tasks uninterruptedly. They also reported a reduction in self-confidence associated with their symptoms. While this speaks to the larger set of female workers, its observations and lessons would seem to apply to most teachers with urinary incontinence almost certainly.
How is a teacher with urinary incontinence supposed to excel at her work? Lucky for her, there are several tips and tricks for dealing with urinary incontinence and bladder leakage at work, and here you’ll find the top 10. Some are strategies for preventing or minimizing the urge to urinate; others are ways to manage that urge when it arises.
Table of Contents
Tips for Teachers With Urinary Incontinence
1. Cut Out the Coffee
You may think you need coffee to wake up and stay awake to teach, but coffee is also dehydrating, promoting urination, and can irritate the bladder, intensifying the urge to urinate. Carbonated drinks, even those without caffeine, can have the same effects on some people.
2. Program Your Body
Unless you have a teaching assistant you can ask to take over while you go and take care of a sudden need, most times, you’ll probably need to wait until the end of class to use the bathroom. Start training your bladder to focus on its need to urinate around those times. You do this by trying to use the bathroom during these times, whether you feel like you need to urinate or not, and, while class is in session, by doing your best to hold it in and avoid taking a spontaneous bathroom break during class.
You can also try to hold out urinating for a few minutes even when you know you’re free to let it flow. This, along with the practice above, can help you extend the length of time you can hold it.
3. Adjust Your Schedule
If your daily school schedule is such that you can’t reasonably use the bathroom between classes, see if you and your supervisor could work out a different schedule that does.
4. Dress for Wetness
If you do end up having a small leak, wearing dark-colored clothing will help obscure it when you’re meeting with clients–or the boss–giving a presentation or chatting at the water cooler. You can also hide visible leakage with a cardigan or jacket tied around your waist; keep one with you for when you’re in a pinch. And, one item of clothing never to be without if you have urinary incontinence: a spare pair of underwear.
