It is always a challenge for the education committee to choose workshops from all the wonderful submissions, but this year was particularly challenging. For the ICS 2017 meeting in Florence, 12-15th September, there were an outstanding variety of workshops to choose from which included wide ranging topics from all aspects of healthcare.
It is really important that we, as a committee, give fair choices of further education to all levels of disciplines, such as urology, gynaecology, urogynaecology, colorectal surgery, physiotherapy, nursing, medical, basic scientific and early career professionals. We also try to ensure that the selection this appropriate for a multinational audience, with interactive teaching methods and hands on opportunities.
Workshops need to be comprehensive, have adequate scientific and evidence based knowledge and with a good take home message for delegates. The Education Committee strives to provide a fair overview of topics, that can be related to delegates daily practice and enhance care of our patients.
This year the committee read through 74 submissions and then scored them based on three criteria- originality/ topicality; educational value and clinical/ scientific relevance. Each member scores each submission independently from one another, providing a score from one (lowest) to five (highest) in each of the categories highlighted above.
These numbers are then combined to give an overall score for that workshop. At the Education Committee in February, the committee review these scores as a basis for choosing the most appropriate workshops for the annual meeting. There is always much debate at the face to face meeting on which of the highest scorers to include, we try to ensure a good variation of unique and interesting topics that encourage new research and debate.
The Education Committee were happy with our final selection this year, we selected 34 workshops in total, including Wiki What? - Be A Part of The Future of ICS and Urology Terms, Step by Step Basic Neurourology Teaching: Diseases Specificities and Chronic Fibrosis in Lower Urinary Tract Dysfunctions—Mechanisms and Therapeutic Options. You can view all of the final selected workshops here on the ICS website. You can also explore the workshops by using the search function and searching by category or profession.
It certainly looks like Florence 2017 will be a very successful meeting if we are to judge it by the high calibre of workshops chosen!
Come join us!
Additional Information
ICS 2017 Highlights
ICS 2017 Workshops
Article written by Frankie Bates on behalf of the Education Committee