2009 Annual Report - Urological Society of Australia and New Zealand

Controversies in The Provision of Urology Services
- not to be missed! This year we are dispensing with
a formal sports afternoon, partly because the level of
participation in the past has not always justified the
time and expense involved in organising this. The
scientific program and trade displays will continue to
the end of the meeting on Wednesday. There will
be no session on the Thursday morning.
Sponsorship this year has been harder to come
by. This is a work in progress but the likelihood of
a shortfall is high compared with previous years.
This had been anticipated to some degree because
of economic conditions but here is no doubt that
other factors are important, including an increasing
number of USANZ sanctioned meetings which are
diluting the pool of money available for the ASM. This
will however be a great meeting, with new features
such as video poster boards and Twitter updates. As
always there will be plenty of opportunities for social
interaction against the stunning backdrop of Perth.
I look forward to seeing you in Perth ■
Christchurch 2011
Jane MacDonald
The Christchurch urologists and New Zealand
Urology Nurses group are hosting our scientific
meeting in Christchurch, New Zealand in 2011,
commencing on 20 February. We are getting the
framework together and obviously we will pick up
momentum this year.
Our venue is the Christchurch Convention Centre
which is a modern, purpose built facility in central
Christchurch. The team there have hosted
large international medical and non-medical
conferences. It will be an ideal venue for our event.
The associated hotels have also been booked in
advance, as have the social venues. Kelly Logan
from Events Planners and Michael Nugara are
coming over for a site visit after the Perth ASM in
February 2010.
Our scientific themes will include spinal/
neurourology, bladder cancer, paediatric urology,
female urology, training and education and hopefully
andrology. This depends somewhat on successfully
appointing keynote speakers and that process is
underway. We will ensure subtopics do not overlap
with the Perth program.
I note that the sports day has been omitted at the
Perth ASM and given the reduced interest in recent
36 Urological Society of Australia and New Zealand | Annual Report 2009 www.usanz.org.au
years, I can understand this. However, we are very
keen to feature Canterbury’s great outdoors as a
theme of this conference and planned to use the
sports day as a Big Day Out and a highlight of the
conference. It will be a sports day with a difference
and we will be really disappointed if this has to be
cancelled. I am sure we can discuss this further at
some stage.
I am keen to appoint our speakers as soon as
possible but other than that I think we have the
bones in place ■
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Section reports
New South Wales
Fin Macneil
The section has undertaken a change in
governance with the executive now comprised of
Past Chair (Henry Woo), Vice Chair (congratulations
to Mohamed Khadra on his election), current Chair
(Finlay Macneil) and Secretary (Michael Wines).
This structure will enable the section to develop a
“corporate memory” and thereby avoid re-inventing
the wheel each year.
The thrust of Henry Woo’s chairmanship has been
to re-invigorate the educational role of the section
with mid year meetings on emerging technology and
closer co-operation with UOP as well as co-badging
some of their meetings.
The mid-year meeting this year was a dinner
meeting on emerging technology and the diagnosis
of prostate cancer – the use of genotyping, PCA3,
other serum markers, PET and MRI. Frank Gardiner,
Damien Bolton and Kris Rasiah gave excellent
distillations of the ‘state of the art’ in these areas.
We plan to continue this format in the future. There
are now also plans for further educational meetings
at the beginning of the year as well, so watch this
space.
The NSW section annual meeting was held in Shoal
Bay on Port Stephens and continued the recent
trend of increased participation by members of the
section. The invited experts, Prof Judd Moul from
Duke and A/Prof Helen O’Connell, entertained
and enlightened registrars and consultants alike.
The meeting tried a new mode of presentation of
registrars’ research in response to the increased
number of registrars now in the section. The