Bladder Diary Instructions

BLADDER DIARY INSTRUCTIONS

The bladder diary will help you provide valuable information about your symptoms to your doctor. It will help you keep track of how much you drink, how often you go to the bathroom, and the amount you urinate with each trip to the bathroom. It will also help you keep track of how often you leak urine. When you are sitting in the examination room, it is frequently difficult to accurately recall this information. A diary that documents your need to urinate every 30 minutes, 8 leakage episodes per day, your need to drink large amounts of fluid per day, or your need to make several trips to the bathroom to urinate at night, will be of great help to you and your physician.

Some women find that the act of completing the bladder diary is actually a valuable diagnostic and treatment tool for them. A woman who is not leaking urine might see that she has trained herself to void every 30 minutes to prevent her bladder from getting very full. Another woman who is leaking urine might see that she drinks an incredible amount of fluids, especially in the evening, and this might explain her need to urinate during the night. She and her physician can look at the diary together and perhaps discover some simple alterations in her habits which might help. Bladder diaries completed after these simple alterations provide patients with feedback about the effectiveness of treatment.

Please be as accurate as possible with your diary, and provide your physician with all the information he/she needs for the number of diary days you have been requested to complete. Take the diary with you all during those days and write down the events as they happen. This will help you work with your doctor to determine the best therapy or combination of therapies that is right for you.

Instructions:

Please record each time you drink fluids, each time you urinate in the toilet, and each time you accidentally leak urine. Do this for the number of days your physician has requested you to complete. Choose days when you can keep track all of this information for the entire day, and record the information as it happens.
Time – place any information about intake, urinating or leakage in the row corresponding to the time it occurred
“What kind?” – be sure to record the type of beverage, such as milk, juice, water, or alcoholic drink. Write “caf” or “decaf” for beverages such as coffee, tea or soft drinks
“How much?” – record how much. Keep in mind that a cup is not the same as a mug, and glasses vary in size. Fill your usual cup, mug or glass with water, and then pour it into a measuring cup to get an accurate measure of the amount of fluid you are drinking.
“Times you urinated” – refers to the number of times you went to the toilet to “pee” during that time.
“How much” – although inconvenient, it is very important to measure the amount you urinate, either cup, ounces, cc’s. Once your urine has gone into the commode, it is impossible to estimate the amount. “A lot” is not at all useful in evaluating your bladder habits. You may be given you a urine hat that measures the amount you urinate with each trip to the bathroom.
“Accidental leaks” – include the loss of any amount of urine, and note if the amount lost was small, medium or large. If you normally wear a pad, change it whenever you find yourself damp or feel yourself leaking. This will increase your awareness when you are leaking and improve the accuracy of the diary.
“Strong urge” – refers to a sudden urge to void, whether you made it to the bathroom to void or lost urine on the way to the bathroom.
“What were you doing?” – please describe what you were doing when you accidentally leaked urine, for example, coughing, sneezing, laughing, reaching, jumping, lifting, rising from a chair, hearing water running, etc.

If the bladder diary is still confusing to you, please call our office. The staff will be happy to answer your questions. Please bring the completed diary with you to your appointment.

If you have been asked to complete this diary to see if you might qualify for a specific treatment, please take the time to complete it for the requested number of days. This is important so that the physician will have the information needed to determine if the treatment is a good choice for you. It is also required by some insurance providers to demonstrate the need for the procedure. Without this information, the insurance provider may deny payment for the treatment.

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