cATHETER CONFIDENCE WEEK 2022
Oh my! What a month June 2022 has been – after Catheter Confidence Week we were only half way through, and yet there was so much to celebrate!
What and why?
June 6th – 12th 2022 was the world’s FIRST ever #catheterconfidenceweek and boy I was here for it! In conjunction with Hollister Incorporated, here at B is for bladder we’ve been beavering away behind the scenes to create a week of nothing but confidence building, story sharing and education supplements all about and all for those who use catheters. Whether you ISC, SPC, urethral or mitrofanoff, we catered to empowering others to speak up and share their catheter super-powers all while maintaining their dignity and ditching the pee taboo!
We chose the week commencing June 6th to launch the project due to World Continence Week being exactly two weeks later – we felt Catheter Confidence Week would be the perfect warmup week before the spotlight shone solely on continence.
Our aims
By asking a series of poll questions, we aimed to gauge not only people’s current catheter confidence but their anatomy awareness and knowledge of general urological matters. With June being a busy bladder awareness month, we plan to ask the same poll questions after World Continence Week in order to generate some hard data which will hopefully show progress and that our efforts to improve the above have not been in vain.
Judging by the general feedback I have had so far during Catheter Confidence Week and now in the weeks after, I have to say I am so proud of the engagement we received and discussions we started surrounding catheters as a medical device. Confidence boosts were on the up – this was evidence through people engaging in our photo challenge for the week.
Celebrating our successes so far
During the week, we introduced a catheter picture challenge. This challenge involved taking a picture of your catheter while toileting out and about; the aim being to encourage catheter users to not be ashamed to tell those around them that they catheterise, to reduce anxiety about catheterising in public and to normalise pee talk if you will.
With over 150 stories shared throughout the week (using the hashtags provided), please see some of my absolute favourites.
I was beyond proud to see this challenge taking off across multiple social platforms: TikTok, Instagram and Facebook but to name a few!
Want to see all our wins from Catheter Confidence week? Check out the Feedback highlight button and CCW2022 highlight button on the B is for Bladder Instagram!
Our gallery pictures below are displaying some images we were tagged in of other joining in in the catheter picture challenge we set for the week. Some of the ladies who joined in had never shared with the social media world that they catheterise so this certainly was a huge deal! Bravo catheter queens!
To top the week off, I managed to bag an appearance on Steph’s Packed Lunch – Channel 4 – where we discussed my journey with catheterisation. Want to watch/ read more about this? Please head back to the the continence and confidence page here on the blog site and click into the T.V appearances section.
Here are some examples of the hashtags we asked people to use during CCW and the picture challenge we set during the week. There were 100+ uses of some of hashtags shown and Instagram was teaming with activity during the week that we then saved to a CCW highlights button on the bisforbladder Instagram page for people to view after- not bad for a newly coined week hey!
Feedback
After opening up a line of communication for feedback on Instagram, we were inundated with messages from end users willing to share with us how they thought the world’s first Catheter Confidence Week went. Check out a few we cherry picked from Instagram to share with you:
“It was great to find new pages and people to follow and connect with by using the hashtags that people were posting with.”
“I told my new partner about my ISC super power for the first time thanks to this week! Catheters are such a misunderstood medical device, thanks for giving them some much needed air time.”
Catheter kings wanted!
Where were all the men at?! For all Catheter Confidence Week’s successes – there will always be things we can improve on for next year. Something that was notably missing from this year’s challenges, catheter selfies, grid posts and general engagement for the week was a male presence. Statistically, there are just as many men who either ISC, SPC, Urethral or Mitrofanoff than there are women – so where were they all?
Are you a man who catheterises? We’d love to hear from you! Please get in touch via the link below.
More to come
World Continence Week 2022 – we got you covered! Urology Awareness Month in September - we got you covered! together with Hollister Incorporated, we at B is for Bladder are continuing to break boundaries, bust myths and enable others to take back some of the control that bladder illnesses can seem to steal over time. Buckle up guys, you’re in for the ride of your life! Change is a-coming, we’re putting all things bladder firmly on the map!