In collaboration with the 7th Scientific Meeting of the Romanian Uro-Gynaecology Society
The first ICS course in Romania was held 7-8 May during a period of pleasant spring weather and was fortunately not affected by either national strikes or ash clouds. This was an add-on course to the 7th National Congress of the Romanian Society of Uro-Gynaecology, whose president is Professor Petre Bratila. Eight ICS speakers presented at the course, including topics in the field of nursing, urology, gynaecology and physiotherapy.
We had 400 registered participants, gynaecologists, neurologists, rehabilitation medicine doctors, urologists, physiotherapists and nurses. The Romanian Society of Uro-Gynaecology had sponsored the fees for 300 participants. This was a difficult task, but Professor Petre Bratila decided that this was the best way to comply with the ICS requirement to have a low fee for residents, physiotherapists and nurses.
Attendance for each ICS-collaborative session was between 80 and 150 persons, depending on the topic discussed. Every session had at least 4 questions from the floor.
The Urodynamic morning session was presented by Lucy Swithinbank, following which Apostolos Apostolidis and Stavros Charalambous had some interesting cases for discussion. In the afternoon, evidence-based medicine presentations on POP and slings were given by Diaa Rizk and Stavros Charalambous and drew many comments and questions from the floor. The highest attendance was reached at the session on Pelvic Floor Rehabilitation and Clean Intermittent Catheterisation (CIC) where physiotherapists and nurses packed the room. Marijke Slieker-ten Hove presented her extensive PhD work, the first time this kind of topic had ever been presented to a scientific audience in Romania. Ronny Pieters also had a full room for his nursing session where simultaneous translation boosted attendance numbers.
The second day started with a captivating presentation by Apostolos Apostolidis on the Physiology of Micturition followed by state-of-the-art presentations by Clare Fowler, Jacques Corcos and Apostolos Apostolidis on Neurogenic Bladder, Botulinum Toxin use in Urology, Neurogenic Bladder in Children, Parkinson and MS.
The interest raised by this course generated an agreement between Marijke Slieker-ten-Hove and the University of Physiotherapy from Bucharest to hold common future training courses.
The objectives of this course were: to present the current standards of incontinence care to the different specialities involved, to raise the interest of the physiotherapist in pelvic floor rehabilitation, to start nurses training as continence nurses, to give a state-of-the-art presentation on neuro-urology. Looking back, in my opinion these objectives were met.
Andrei Manu-Marin