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Research & Audit

The Section of Endourology has an Audit & Research Committee which meets two or three times a year, usually before meetings of the Executive Committee.

The Section's Audit and Research Committee are keen to work with BAUS members who may be contemplating undertaking a survey or circulating a questionnaire to colleagues. We would be happy to review questionnaires with a view to offering constructive comments and advising if we are aware of similar work.

The Section will only authorise circulation to Section members if they are convinced the project is of value. The aim of this policy is to prevent members from receiving multiple, poorly-constructed questionnaires. We hope that, if we can reassure members that a questionnaire has been scrutinised by our Committee, colleagues would consider replying to it rather than automatically deleting it.

Requests for help or advice with research & audits can be emailed to the Section Chair.

National Snapshot Audit of ESWL

The Section undertook a snapshot audit of ESWL practice in the UK during 2016 & 2017. The aim of this audit was to gain an idea of the "real life" efficacy of treatment, away from the large single-centre experiences reported in the literature.

We hoped that these data would help us develop standards for ESWL in the UK and Ireland. This in turn may help in the process of service rationalisation, as well as providing the opportunity to gather further data prospectively, thus ensuring safe and efficient ESWL services are maintained, and allowing Departments the opportunity to analyse their own outcome data regularly.

All UK and Ireland Urology departments undertaking ESWL were requested to:

  • complete a survey (Excel Worksheet 1 - Departmental Data) to give us an idea of how ESWL is delivered at each institution. This information only needed to be gathered once; and
  • submit data (Excel Worksheet 2 – Patient Episode Data) for the first 10 new renal (not ureteric) stones treated with ESWL, starting on 1 October 2016.

Departmental Data

Patient Episode Data

There were data collection time-points:

  • October 2016: initial recruitment of the first 10 new EDSWL cases (the first 10 consecutive new renal stone cases treated with ESWL)
  • January 2017: 3-month review of all recruited cases
  • April 2017: 6-month revioew of all recruited cases

To ensure patient confidentiality was not compromised, departments were requested to keep a secure log of patient identifiers on a local database. Once submitted, each of the cases listed on the spreadsheet was assigned a study number.  Patient identifiable data such as patient NHS number or date of birth was not entered on the spreadsheet used on audit returns. This was an exciting opportunity to gather clinically useful information and inform best practice.

Contact us by email for any queries ...

Ben Grey, Richard Napier-Hemy, Oliver Wiseman, Andrew Dickinson & Daron Smith
On behalf of the Executive Committee of the BAUS Section of Endourology