"A tree must be bent while it is young": teaching urological surgical techniques to schoolchildren.

BACKGROUND: Playing video games in childhood may help achieve advanced laparoscopic skills later in life. The virtual operating room will soon become a reality, as "doctor games 2.0" will doubtlessly begin to incorporate virtual laparoscopic techniques. OBJECTIVES: To teach surgical skills to schoolchildren in order to attract them to urology as a professional choice later in life. MATERIALS AND METHODS: As part of EAU Urology Week 2010, 108 school children aged 15-19 attended a seminar with lectures and simulators (laparoscopy, TUR, cystoscopy, and suture sets) at the 62nd Congress of the German Society of Urology in Düsseldorf. A Pub-Med and Google Scholar search was also performed in order to review the beneficial effects of early virtual surgical training. MeSh terms used were "video games," "children," and "surgical skills." Searches were performed without restriction for a certain period of time. RESULTS: In terms of publicity for urology, EAU Urology Week, and the German Society of Urology, the event was immensely successful. Regarding the literature search, four relevant publications were found involving children. An additional three articles evaluated the usefulness of video gaming in medical students and residents. CONCLUSIONS: Making use of virtual reality to attract and educate a new generation of urologists is an important step in designing the future of urology.

The future of urology.

The Future of Urology has been written in times of economic downturn, with the inevitable effects on health sector spending. Nevertheless, this document aims to define a path whereby the EAU can play a pivotal role in ensuring the highest standard of care throughout Europe, and by setting standards, throughout the rest of the world. The future of urology will be dependent on improved education and training leading to high quality urological care, and to developing a service that is patient focused. The patient focus is becoming increasingly important in urology. This means providing full information about disease processes and urological procedures to patients and allowing them to judge the quality of the urological service that they may choose. Education must start in medical school and as 5% of community medical practice is urology then every medical student must receive urological training. This also applies to nurses and the other professions allied to medicine (PAMS). The EAU should provide a urological curriculum for training of medical students, nurses and PAMS, as well as the more conventional curriculum for postgraduate training and continued medical education for urological specialists. An integrated EAU Knowledge and Learning Centre would provide an invaluable resource to patients and to those who deliver urologic care alike. With high quality training must come a vigorous assessment of knowledge and competence. In the future, the competence of all those delivering urological care will need to be assessed. For urologists in training and specialist urologists this will include not only an assessment of knowledge but an assessment of surgical competence. Improving quality will be supported by the continued subspecialisation of urology, ensuring that all urologists have a surgical portfolio which ensures their competency in the procedures they deliver. This will inevitably result in a concentration of urological services and indeed to the development of larger urological centres. The concept of Centres of Excellence could be developed to include all aspects and subspecialties of urological care. The SPO envisages that all urology will be carried out in Centres of Excellence which will vary in terms of their size and the range of urology offered, but nevertheless all urological care will be of the highest quality. Finally, the future of urology will depend on the medico-political interface and the EAU has a great deal to offer in this respect. The patterns of urological care differ throughout Europe but this should be seen as a challenge for the EAU to define quality, irrespective of the different methods of healthcare provision. The EAU has made extraordinary advances in the last two decades and the SPO hope this document will support the EAU's efforts to maintain its aim of improving urological care for the benefit of patients.

The Internet and prostate cancer patients: searching for and finding information.

OBJECTIVE: To define the characteristics of prostate cancer patients who use the Internet. MATERIAL AND METHODS: In October 2002, 511 prostate cancer patients from Stockholm-Gotland County completed a postal questionnaire consisting of 146 questions regarding use of the Internet, demographic factors, level of information about the disease and its treatment, quality of life and trade-off possibilities. RESULTS: The response rate was 86.5% (n=511) and the mean age of the respondents was 71 years. A total of 210 men (41.1%) had access to the Internet. Eighty-two men (16.4%) had looked for information on prostate cancer, either by themselves or with the aid of others. Among men aged 50-60 years, 39% were Internet users, compared to 8% among men aged 75-80 years; the figures for university graduates versus those who had only attended elementary school were 33% and 3%, respectively. Fifty of the 82 men (61%) who searched for information regarded themselves as being satisfactorily informed by online information. CONCLUSIONS: Of the men in this cohort, 16% searched the Internet for information regarding their prostate cancer. Young and well-educated men utilized the Internet more frequently than others, but they did not find information more often than older and less well-educated men. It is possible that the Internet promotes social inequality in obtaining healthcare in favor of well-educated, highly paid individuals.