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E.O.E Newsletter | www.huanet.gr
to date on what is happening when it comes to education. So, you coordinate and overview what your colleagues are doing in the different Offices that support and report to you. An EAU Adjunct Secretary General for the EAU is a name, you become visible, everywhere. I have been in the USA at the American Association of Urology, in China, Japan etc., because you are one of the four leaders of European Urology. But I must admit that in the end, it was not me who did the work, but James N’Dow in the Guidelines Office, Joan Palou in European School, Vincenzo Mirone in the Scholarship Programme, Rien Nijman in the EU- ACME, and Michiel Sedelaar in the Young Urology Office. They did the work and I just needed to see how well they did. And these were all excellent people. So, for me there was not too much work, just attending there working parties and sometimes making some suggestions. So, it’s a very important job to be Adjunct Secretary General, but the work is actually done by the other people. If you inspire them and push them to be excellent and motivated, then you are likely a rather successful Adjunct Secretary General!
F.N.: Professor Van Poppel, what were the driving forces for the establishment of the EAU Patient Office and the EAU Policy Office?
H.vP.: The driving force was, as I said, the fact that in my position, I didn’t have too much work. I was Adjunct Secretary General and we had the Board meeting and the Executive meetings on a regular basis. But I felt that there was something lacking. Because education means not only education of professionals or education of GPs or education of young urologists, but also the education of the patients. And that was the time when the EAU started what we called the Patient Information Initiative. We wrote leaflets that patients could consult and read and share with the GPs and with the urologists, in patient understandable language. Then we realised that you cannot write in patient understandable language if you don’t involve patients. We saw that since the patient’s information is a translation of the Guidelines, which are made for professionals, you need to have also patients in the Guidelines Office. We started to have patients’ representatives looking at the Guidelines also from a patient perspective. We built a patient track at our yearly congress, where some issues specifically for patients were discussed and directed by them. So, in the end, next to being Adjunct Secretary General for Education, with my five guys that were working
hard, I convinced the Executive of the EAU about the importance that patients have in all our activities. You know in the European Urology Journal, there is a patient translation and a patient summary, there are patients in our Congresses and meetings and in the Guidelines. There are patients everywhere! Is this so important? Well, when you start doing policy, you realize that you need the patients to support you. Because when we knock on the door and we say: “We need to have more of this or that”, then the policy makers will say: “No. You are doctors. You want to make more money”. But if the patients knock on the door: “We need to have this and that”, it’s different and much more efficient. So, we need to work together with the patients, in order to further improve the quality of care for all the urological patients in Europe and worldwide.
F.N.: What are your responsibilities and tasks as the Chairman of the EAU Policy Office?
H.vP.: Starting from the Patient Information we made a real office. In the Patient Office there initially were three pillars. The first pillar was the Patient Information, the second one was the EAU Patient Advocacy Group. So, we asked all the patients’ organizations, the World Bladder Cancer Coalition, Europe Uomo for Prostate Cancer, the World Federation on Incontinence and Pelvic Pain, the Kidney Cancer Coalition etc., to become members of the EAU Patient Advocacy Group and to help them engaging in all our activities. Finally, the third pillar was the Policy in the European Union that took more and more energy and time spent. In the end we decided to have a Patient Office with two pillars while the Policy Office became a separate office. So, when I stepped down in Leuven, I started visiting the European Parliament, where I was paired with an MEP, my country man Philippe De Backer, for two weeks. I followed him everywhere: we went for lunch together and at the end of the day we went to have a drink. During his working day I followed all the meetings he had, on energy, on windmills, on transport, on vaccinations etc. He was seeing all these people and I could simply be there and attend. This opened my eyes! Most people I met did not know what Urology was, what urologists did and they have never heard about the EAU. What most politicians knew was ESMO, the European Society of Medical Oncology. They were well represented and they had a well-established Policy Office. I told the Executive of the EAU: “We need to have a Policy
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