The ICS Nursing Committee is pleased to share a brief update on several key items of interest to our nursing members.
New ICS Nursing Committee Chair
Congratulations to Jane Clarke, who has been appointed Chair of the ICS Nursing Committee following Professor Kristine Talley’s period as Acting Chair. The Committee extends its sincere gratitude to Kristine for her dedicated service and valuable contributions.
Jane is a Continence Clinical Nurse Consultant and holds a Master’s in Nursing and Business Administration. After building a successful private practice, Jane now works as an Expert Witness within the clinical negligence space. She has several published articles relevant to the continence nursing field, with a particular focus on psychological trauma and bladder and bowel dysfunction, and on preventing patient harm. As a current member of the Committee, she brings extensive knowledge, experience, and enthusiasm to the role.
Committee positions will become available in the next few months, and we would encourage our members to apply once these are posted.
ICS Annual Conference, Maastricht, 6-9 October 2026
The conference was a wonderful event, with delegates learning from world-wide experts in a variety of continence fields. The conference offered cutting-edge workshops, state-of-the-art sessions and expert led discussions, all with the aim of advancing continence care.
We were particularly proud that one of the two workshops submitted by the Nursing Committee was accepted, with huge congratulations to Kristine Talley and her colleagues for their workshop ‘Advancing Research and Clinical Guidance on Women’s Bladder Self-Care Practices’. The workshop was extremely well-attended and generated some eager engagement from the international audience.
In addition, we would like to acknowledge that Melissa Northwood, member of the Nursing Committee, won the Best in Prize Award for her presentation on Female Lower Urinary Tract Symptoms (LUTS)/Voiding Dysfunction. Nurse member Maria Mirskaya, from Sweden, also won an abstract award for Best in Category Gynecology, pregnancy and pelvic floor disorders, for their abstract, "Risk factors for symptomatic pelvic organ prolapse with concomitant urinary incontinence one year after first childbirth: A nationwide register study." Congratulations Melissa and Maria!
The ICS annual general meeting was also held during the conference. Included in this meeting was a focus on membership professions, with nurses representing 6% of ICS memberships. We hope to see this representation grow and amplify the valuable role nurses play in continence care.
Next year’s conference will be held in beautiful Florence from the 15-18 September 2027. As we start to think about workshop submissions and nursing forum topics, we would love to invite input from our members about topics of interest. We would also warmly welcome members who have an interest in presenting research or project findings or have an idea for a workshop and would benefit from the Committee’s support.
ICS 2026 Nursing Forum
The Committee would like to thank members who completed our member survey in October 2025, your insights were instrumental in shaping our offerings for the ICS 2026 Annual Meeting, which included the Nursing Forum.
We were honoured to welcome 4 presenters for our Nursing Forum, including Professor Donna Bliss with an update on the ICS Terminology Report, Hanny Cobussen-Boekhorst, NP from the Netherlands, presenting on Nursing Clinical Practice in the Netherlands, Dr Dina Mahjoob, Clinical Researcher, exploring data-driven innovation, and Dr Wouter van der Sanden, Urologist, who presented on his Ketamine Clinic and Induced Uropathy.
The Nursing Forum was well-received, with approximately 60 attendees. We were also excited to present one attendee with the lucky door prize; a copy of the book – Managing Fecal Incontinence for the Advanced Practice Nurse, presented and signed by Dr Bliss.
ICS Observerships
ICS Observerships are available annually through the ICS website, yet nurses have historically applied only rarely. We strongly encourage nursing colleagues to consider this excellent professional development opportunity.
ICS offers four types of observerships, each providing up to $5,000 for placements of up to one month for applicants who have been members for a minimum of one year:
· Urodynamics
· Neurourology
· Clinical
· Research
Please watch for announcements and consider applying.