Prolapse: informing a new intervention to raise awareness and help women seek help sooner.

Pelvic organ prolapse (POP) affects 40-50% of women. POP happens to people with female anatomy. We use the term 'women' in this research. Women feel embarrassed talking about vaginal bulge, bladder, bowel, and sexual problems. Women don't have information about what can help, or when to ask for professional help. There is currently no routine assessment of POP. Many women feel clinicians don't take their symptoms seriously. The research aim is to develop a primary care intervention to increase women's and clinicians' awareness of POP. We hope getting earlier help from clinicians will prevent or reduce distressing symptoms.

Before an intervention can be developed and rolled out, we need to understand primary care staff's experiences, attitudes, and practice in relation to detecting and managing prolapse and other pelvic floor disorders (PFD). We also need to gather their views and feedback on our proposed intervention. It may take place at routine cervical screening appointments. We will do this using a questionnaire, followed by interviews with clinicians.

Once we have clinicians' views and feedback, we will get a group to work together to develop our intervention. The group will include women who attend for cervical screening, clinicians who do cervical screening, managers, and other clinicians who offer NHS services for women with prolapse. We will ask women and clinicians if they think the intervention is acceptable and will work within the NHS. If they agree, we will plan a pilot study for the future.

Research objectives are to
1. Find the barriers that women seeking help with POP symptoms face.
2. Decide on the content, setting and delivery of the intervention to change help seeking behaviour be most effective.
3. Explore with all interested parties if the intervention is acceptable and will work within the NHS before planning a pilot study.