Physical and Attitudinal Barriers to Health Promotion in Women with Multiple Sclerosis in Canada

Research Objectives: To identify the barriers (physical and attitudinal) to accessing health promotion practices for women with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) in Canada.

Design: Online survey.

Setting: General community.

Participants: Four hundred and fifty-six Canadian women over the age of 18, with a self-reported diagnosis of MS completed the online survey. Participants completed the survey on a volunteer basis. The survey was advertised in MS clinics across Canada and through the MS Society research portal.

Interventions: Not applicable.

Main Outcome Measures: Descriptive analysis was conducted through Opinio and no tests of significance were run as the study was exploratory. For the open-ended questions, a thematic analysis was performed to identify barriers.

Results: The majority of women were aged 41-60 (54.18%) and had MS symptoms for between 5-15 years (42.6 %). Fifty-eight percent of respondents were able to walk independently in the community.
Ninety seven percent of respondents had a family doctor, and of those, 20.38% indicated their family physician’s examining table was not accessible. Of those who were wheelchair users 73.53% indicated that they were examined in their wheelchair greater than 50% of the time.
Physical barriers identified were: inaccessibility of examination table, distance from parking lot to building, transportation and inaccessibility of health professional office buildings.
Respondent’s perceptions of the attitudes held by health professionals compounded the barriers, these included: lack of knowledge of MS, lack of awareness of the impact of MS on sexual function, and invisible disability.

Conclusions: Women with MS have many physical and emotional health needs. This study identified common themes which included inaccessibility of examination table, discussions regarding sexual function and issues being dismissed as due to MS symptoms. This is one of the first Canadian studies to focus on barriers to accessing health services for women with MS. Future studies are needed further explore the experiences of women with MS to then implement strategies to overcome the barriers identified in this study.

Author(s) Disclosures: None