What’s the best way to ensure quality in urology care?

If you ask the European Association of Urology Nurses (EAUN) they would say: Guidelines. We took the opportunity to talk to Susanne Vahr, Clinical Nurse Specialist at University Hospital of Copenhagen, but also a board member of EAUN, responsible for the EAUN guidelines.

EAUN has put a lot of effort in developing guidelines on the most common urology nursing topics. One of them is ‘Intermittent Urethral Catheterisation in Adults’, and to spread the guideline even more, they have created a brand new summary of these guidelines – an easy-to-use quickguide to be used in the daily work.

First, what is EAUN?

– The EAUN is a non-profit organization that started just before the millennium, and in March 2017 we have the 18th EAUN meeting, in London. We can thank nurses that felt the need for a professional urology network for EAUN. Today it’s a growing organization with more than 2800 members and about 400 nurses attending the annual meeting every year.

What’s the purpose of the organization?

– The purpose of EAUN is to act as the representative body for European nurses in urology, and facilitate the continued development of urological nursing in all its aspects. This means EAUN foster the highest standards of urological nursing care throughout Europe.

What is the EAUN guidelines?

– EAUN develop guidelines on the most common urology nursing topics in order to support as many nurses as possible across Europe. Nurses that know the guidelines and use them in planning and in everyday patient care will be able to deliver evidence based patient care. Together with the nurses’ own experiences and the patients’ preferences the guidelines lay a ground for well-founded decisions in care.

Who are the guidelines for?

– The intended target group of the guidelines is practicing urology nurses and nurses working in a related field throughout Europe. Many of the guidelines are translated by national societies. If you visit the EAUN webpage and want to download a guideline, you can choose between the translated versions.

Where can I find the guidelines?

– All guidelines can be downloaded for free in the EAUN website and hard copies can be ordered through the EAUN office.

Why did you choose to do a summary of this particular guideline?

– Looking at the thousands of page views on the National Guideline Clearinghouse webpage, we can see that the Intermittent Catheterization guideline has been visited frequently.

– Besides we also know many nurses want kind of a pocket guideline clearly describing the procedure that can be easily read and carried around. We expect that this will make more nurses and students read the guideline.

Can everyone use it? 

– As we aim to reach nurses all over Europe and even beyond, and we know that there is a great variation in the level of education and practical training of nurses in urology, it is also important to remember that local policies always should be followed.

Will you continue this work?

– EAUN hope to contribute to the continuous development of urology nursing care by continuing developing new and up-dating existing guidelines.       

Click to download the edited summary of ‘Intermittent Urethral Catheterisation in Adults’.

And watch the full interview with Susanne Vahr here: