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E.O.E Newsletter | www.huanet.gr
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patients, and Hein had obviously a lot of experience with them. He is a leading Advocate in Europe for the treatment of cancer and he has been a pioneer in that field. He and the EAU executive decided to develop the EAU Patient Information website. Although the whole idea started in about 2012, it was around 2020 when it was decided that patient engagement was so strategic to the EAU, that they developed this fully fledged independent Patient Office, which is another Office of the EAU, just like the Policy Office, the Guidelines Office and the School of Urology. As chairman of this Office I now have a seat at the table of the EAU Board and that’s an immense honor.
The whole idea and the vision behind the Patient Office is to include the patients’ voice and perspective and I am very proud of that! This Office, integrates
with all the other Offices, like the Guidelines Office (we have patients on the Guidelines Committees), the Policy Office (patients influence policy) and the ESU (we, the urologists and the patients, work together, we participate together in research, we educate our graduates and undergraduates and thanks to Professor Liatsikos’ vision, we now have patients teaching urologists through webinars). This is an Office that’s consistently adapting and changing. But I think what has now been established, is that at the core of the Patient Office are the patients themselves, as represented by their advocacy groups. The patients now have a voice in the activities of the EAU. I would absolutely state that we are far from ideal but it’s a new journey and the vision is promising, because patients are involved patients now, they are no longer passive takers of Urology advice, they are actively involved and we have to listen to them. So, the philosophy of the Patient Office is to listen to our patients. We come up with ideas based on their data, with patient reported outcomes being the ultimate data. We strongly believe that this can also help us, as urologists, in shared decision-making which will lead, based on good data, to better outcomes. But it’s more; there are patients as educators, patients as researchers and we collaborate with several national societies. All I can say is that this is how it all started. I’m sorry for being long winded, but this is not a simple yes or no question. It evolved and it is still evolving, and I hope to a better place!
T.S.: How do you feel about being the Chairman of the Patient Office? What are your responsibilities in this position?
E.R.: It was a tremendous honor to be asked by the EAU to take on this role. To be honest, I’m not quite sure why I was asked, except that I have been involved in the development of the Patient Information website. I also have some previous work experience. I advise the Irish Health Service on all urological matters. I have a national government role in Ireland and part of that work, many years ago, was working with patient support groups; we developed peer support for patients in Ireland.. So, that was my background. How do I feel about it? Well, it is a completely new journey! it is a discrete Office and an office is only as good as its structures and its members, the people working on it. As I said earlier, there is no template, it is evolving. We had to get established and set up a kind of working structure. There are three key
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