EAUN22: Nurse led clinics

Highlighting clinics for benign conditions

The ever-growing workload in urology has resulted in changes to the way urological care has traditionally been delivered. In many countries, nurse led clinics in urology manage and deliver holistic patient centred care for a variety of benign conditions within the multidisciplinary team.

These can range from lower urinary tract assessment and treatment clinics, including trial without catheter clinics, performing invasive and non-invasive urodynamics, continence assessment and treatment clinics, intermittent selfcatheterisation education, intravesical instillations, diagnostic cystoscopy and therapeutic intravesical botox injections, amongst others.

Nurses with differing levels of autonomy may deliver these services. The scope of practice and level of responsibility of the nurse delivering the service is associated with their grade. The grade of the nurse, or role title, which carries with it a certain level of autonomy in decision-making, is related to their experience, education, and training. This however is not standardised internationally, and a myriad of role titles and levels of autonomy exist which may cause confusion. While role titles, grades, and bands of nurses, may have different meaning in different countries, the important consideration for nurses is that they work within their scope of practice.

On Saturday, 2 July at 15:45, State-of-the-art lecture 1 will examine the role of the nurse in delivering nurse led clinics to assess, treat, educate patients, and manage common benign urological conditions to improve patient’s quality of life. Ms. Margaret Tiernan, Continence Advisor in the Primary Care Centre in Roscommon, Ireland, will outline the functioning of her clinic and the pathways that she uses to manage continence issues in the community. Following this, Ms. Angie Rantell, Lead Nurse, Urogynaecology at King’s College Hospital, NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK, will explain the methods she utilises to meet patients expectations in relation to overactive bladder in her nurse led clinic. These nurse led clinics will demonstrate the valuable role that  specialist nurses contribute to the management of benign urological conditions.

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Robert McConkey, SCO Member, Galway, Ireland, r.mcconkey@eaun.org