The EAUN is listening to you!

Nurses are often asked to take part in reflective practice. Organisations or board members of an organisation should do the same. From your much appreciated feedback we have reflected on the needs of our EAUN members. As a result of that the board has gone through a restructure (Fig. 1) so we can improve our delivery to you as members on what you want from us as an organisation, and to ensure we implement our long term strategy. (See www.nurses.uroweb.org/nurses/about-eaun/the-aims-and-strategy/.)

Nine different national societies met last year at the annual EAUN meeting in Amsterdam to discuss what the EAUN could do for everyone. A key theme everyone wanted was ‘educational support’. The restructure of the EAUN has allowed us to achieve this, by focusing on the ‘Special Interest Groups (SIGs). The SIGs (prostate cancer, bladder cancer, continence and endourology) have all increased their membership and are now delivering regular webinars, taking turns to run yearly ESUN (European School of Urology Nursing) courses and have started to review guidelines that are related to their areas of interest.

This year’s National Societies Meeting was represented by 11 different countries. Based on the feedback from last year’s National Societies Meeting, we discussed three key areas to help with future collaboration.

1. Accreditation
   • We have launched our collaboration with the EU-ACME/ACNE accreditation of CME/CNE programme in urology. This means educators can apply for accreditation on an educational course if it meets the required standards. If your country runs a webinar, activity or event that is educational, you can gain accreditation which allows individuals who attend the session to gain credits, add them to an individual’s educational profile to demonstrate continued professional development, and track all further educational events they attend and any credits gained.
   • Individuals get their own account/portfolio showing all the courses they have attended.
   • The EAUN want to support other countries to accredit their local courses. This allows for courses to be internationally recognised, demonstrates a high standard and is more attractive to a wider audience.

2. Special Interest Groups (SIGs)
   • We now have four special interest groups (prostate cancer, bladder cancer, continence and endourology). The aim of these groups is to gain representation from around the world and to encourage networking and provide a forum/think tank for allied professionals to exchange best practice and improve patient care. It is important we have representation globally, as it’s the only way we can standardise care and understand what new practices are going on globally. So please join the SIGs in your area of interest as we value everyone’s expertise and viewpoint.

3. Educational Framework for Urological Nursing (EFUN)

EFUN aims to standardise urology education by providing a framework with core urology learning outcomes for people to achieve.

• Version 1 of EFUN has been devised, indicating six learning outcomes, and each area will have specified educational content related to the learning outcomes. This version was reviewed by the panel and associations (EAUN, BAUN, ANZUNs), and version 2 is being drafted, once this has been agreed, and re-discussed with the associations, urology nurses and collaborators, version 3 will be published shortly after.
• We had a questionnaire response from 26 countries. 24 countries are interested in EFUN and particularly how EFUN could assist them better to serve their members through a potential accreditation system.
• A paper on how EFUN could be implemented has been drafted and will shortly be presented to the associations for further feedback. We are aware not all countries have heard of EFUN and we need to disseminate throughout the nursing community.
• Advanced practice is needed for some countries but this will be addressed at a later date.

In summary, the EAUN is asking their (member) national societies three key questions:

1. Does your country need accreditation for any conferences, courses, educational events, activities, or local hospital course’s? Please follow this website: mycme.eu-acme.org/
2. Do allied members in your country want to join one of the SIG’s – to represent their country in a urological disease?
3. Will EFUN be useful in your country, by providing a urological educational framework that assists you better to serve your members through potential accreditation?

If you have any queries or responses to these three questions, please email me: p.allchorne@eaun.org.

Our collaboration with other national societies and members across the globe is important to us, we cannot achieve our aims and long term strategy if we do not work in partnership together. We continue to have international links across the globe, e.g., recently I attended the 2023 Advanced Urologic Conference organised by SUNA (Society of Urologic Nurses and Associates) in America. Urology nurses in America often have similar challenges to us, but in a different health system. They have developed constructive solutions to address them, so we can all learn from each other. The EAUN is aware that many of us have the same struggles, hence, global collaboration is important to improve our continuing education and our work life balance, so we can give our patients the best care possible, given the resources available.