2009 Annual Report - Urological Society of Australia and New Zealand

such I was asked to stand in Helen’s place and was
duly appointed as a co-opted member of the Council,
with limited voting rights.
In the term of 2010, a number of issues of relevance
to urologists have come before the Council of RACS.
RACS has decided to form an Academy of Surgical
Educators. The purpose of this is to act as an
educational resource within RACS to support both
the training and continuing professional development
(CPD) programs. The terms of reference have been
set and applications for appointment to the Academy
have been requested from the membership. There
will be limited representation from the specialist
societies.
USANZ offered some objection to the constituency
of the Academy, though not to the formation of the
Academy in principle. The major objection was the
lack of adequate representation for those bodies
which actually deliver RACS’ educational program.
The Academy has yet to start functioning and it
will be in the fullness of time that we will see how it
interacts with our own urological training programs.
RACS has developed a Code of Conduct with
respect to its membership’s association with the
medical industry. It is a little stricter than that
developed by USANZ and I would urge all members
to visit the RACS website: www.surgeons.org and
appraise themselves of the Code of Conduct.
National registration is pending and the legislation
governing national registration is currently before
Federal Parliament. It would appear that while there
will be national registration, the disciplinary arms of
the current state registration committees will remain
state-based, but will interact with the federal body.
There will also be a requirement for documentation of
CPD to retain national registrations.
RACS has supported the World Health Organisation
(WHO’s) protocol in regards to operative procedures.
This is meant as a template to be customised and
added to as each individual jurisdiction applies the
protocol to its relevant practice. The protocol is
available on the RACS website. ■
Annual Scientific Meetings
Gold Coast 2009
Mark Frydenberg
The 2009 USANZ ASM was well attended with 437
USANZ delegates, 178 ANZUNS delegates and 176
Trade, but only 25 accompanying partners - many
of whom were partners of the organising committee
and guests. This trend may need investigating, as if
it continues it may not be viable to have accompanying
partner activities as part of the ASM program.
We were fortunate to listen to a truly memorable
Harry Harris Oration from Julian Burnside QC, on
the very topical issue of human rights and refugee
status in Australia. The delegates were also fortunate
to have heard many excellent presentations
from the invited guests Urs Studer, Michael Blute,
Joel Sheinfeld, Dean Knoll, Phillippe Zimmern and
Richard Gaston as well as from several local experts,
both urological and non-urological.
I would want to extend my sincere thanks to the
Trade for all their sponsorship of the meeting. I
also thank Daniel Moon - Scientific Convenor for
his enormous efforts; the unit from Southern Health
(Monash) for their support in organising the meeting;
to my wife Barb for her assistance with all the social
activities; Michael Nugara and Alex Malley for providing
financial guidance for the project, and lastly
to Kelly Logan and her team from Events Planners
who helped arrange the meeting in a most professional
fashion.
It was a wonderful experience being the ASM convenor
and I would encourage any urologist to volunteer
for this task in the future as it is enormously
rewarding to successfully contribute to USANZ and
to your colleagues. ■
Western Australia 2010
Andrew Tan
The organising committee of the 2010 USANZ ASM
is looking forward to warmly welcoming delegates
to Perth from 21-24 February 2010. An exciting
and educational scientific program has been put
together including topics such as prostate and renal
cancer, reconstructive and plastic surgery in urology,
paediatric urology, incontinence and BPH.
The scientific meeting will conclude with a session on
Urological Society of Australia and New Zealand | Annual Report 2009 www.usanz.org.au 35