Dear colleagues and friends

BAUN and the conference organising group are busy preparing for our next annual conference in the magnificent city of Edinburgh.

The conference and exhibition will take place in the Edinburgh International Conference Centre. Once again we hope, with the help of exhibitors, speakers and members, to make this the biggest and best conference in BAUN’s history.

Our new president Mr Jerome Marley will open the conference. The keynote address will be delivered by the chief nurse for Scotland and will examine the challenges we face within our practice and set the scene for the 3-day packed programme.

We have taken on board your comments from last year and value your input as this helps us put together a programme, which best reflects your needs as members. As you know BAUN places great emphasis on the diversity of information our members receive and to that end a wide range of companies have been invited to attend the exhibition. There has already been strong interest from companies wishing to participate.

The programme offers variety and should appeal to all nurses working within urology. This will be the second year for the school of urology. The interactive nature of these education sessions enable members to examine existing areas of nursing practice, explore new ventures or even gain new skills. This was well evaluated last year and we anticipate that demand for sessions will be high and recommend that you indicate which session you wish to attend when you book your conference place.

As you will remember from the very moving dedications to Eileen last year, the very special Eileen O ‘Hagen annual lecture was launched.

This lecture seeks to reflect challenging and innovative practice. This year we hope to have a big speaker with an even bigger lecture and the winner of the award will also present their work.
The sub section of oncology have been working as hard as ever and once again they hope to offer a stimulating programme to run parallel with the general issues in urology nursing.

This year we really want to hear from you about your practice and the free papers provide a forum for you to tell us about your service. BAUN feel that sharing practice is essential if we are to develop and grow as an association. If you have had a good idea, developed a new service or changed your practice we want to hear about it. Equally if you have had a good idea with not such good outcomes we still want to hear about it so that we can all learn and not make the same mistakes.

The call for abstracts will be made soon and we hope that lots of you will submit a paper. You never know you might win a prize for best presentation. Don’t forget the free places; once again we have 5 free places up for grabs, details will be available soon.

The social scene is always wonderful and BAUN pride itself on their creativeness in this area. Each year we have the spectacular gala dinner with live band and disco, and last year we had BAUN on ice. This year will be slightly different in that the Tuesday fun night will be free for you to explore the wonderful city of Edinburgh.

The gala dinner will be as spectacular as ever and this along with all catering (except Tuesday night) is included in your conference fees.

The conference is a very important part of BAUN’s annual activity and without you it would not be the success it is year after year, so keep flying the flag, book your place and we look forward to seeing you in Bonnie Scotland.Be There or be Square.

Tarnya Hulme
Chair of Conference Organising Group