Dear members of the European Society of Paediatric Urology Nurse group, ESPUN.

I hope you all enjoy the summer, here in Germany I love summer even when its not sunny it feels that everybody is happier, life seems to be easier, the people are much more friendly, and everything seems to runs more smoothly.
I often think of the ESPU/ESPU-N congress in Amsterdam in May this year.

With more than 100 participants at the sessions and fully booked workshops I think it was a very good meeting.
I would like to thank all of you who participated in a lively and professional way, particularly those you who presented a paper or ran a workshop, for sharing your own work with us. 
Each year it’s very difficult for the board to decide who should be awarded the prizes. As in previous years there has been one prize for the best research paper and one for the best clinical paper. This year we were delighted to award these prizes to Brigitte Seliner (Switzerland) and Janet Fishwick (United Kingdom) for their excellent work.

I would also like to specially thank go those members who chaired each session, they did a great job - the sessions were well organised and the atmosphere was good.
Each year I find it extremely interesting and amazing to see how we all seem to do a similar job in caring for and treating children and their families, although we live in different countries and speak different languages. There seems to be positive motivation amongst our members for sharing good practice, which is evidence based.  

The board of the ESPU-N encourages you all as members to look at “sharing clinical practise”, and to apply for the travel scholarship, just have a look at our website.
Please let us know if you have any suggestions about what you would like in further meetings or on the website, you are very welcome to contact either myself or one of the board members. And did you ever think of becoming a board member??

At the end of November the board meet to prepare the 21st Annual Congress of the ESPU- April 28th to May 1st 2010, which will be held in Antalya, Turkey. And we are looking forward to receiving your abstracts and/or any ideas to workshops, panel discussions.
The next congress will be the first for me as your new president. I’m proud to belong to the group, as part of the board and it’s a great honour to represent you all and your interests as your president now.  With an enthusiastic membership and a fantastic board I’m looking forward to this new challenge.

To finish I don’t want to miss saying thank you so much to Ulla-Britt Jansson who has been a really excellent president. We’ve learned a lot from Ulla-Britt especially how it’s possible to combine professionalism and friendship. Thank you also to Monika Doroszkiewicz who has been a wonderful and always reliable secretary for the last four years. You both have been a great team to us!

Sunny greetings to all of you

Ellen Janhsen
ESPUN president