Medical associations: Are they outdated or still relevant?

In the mid-1950s, 75% of all U.S.-based physicians were members of the American Medical Association. More recent figures show this number has decreased to below 15% and continues to decline. Is it the cost, their lack of relevance, or are there just too many associations, subspecialty groups, and meetings? Truly it’s a cultural phenomenon where the idea of joining large groups or organizations is less appealing to many.

At the CUA, we recognize that we must earn your membership on a daily basis by providing services and programs that are relevant to your needs and that are both time- and cost-efficient. We acknowledge that we are competing with many other specialty and subspecialty societies and associations at your hospital, your region, and within your province.

It is with that knowledge that over the past few months we have been working hard to assess current operations at the highly successful and productive Office of Education. We are doing this via needs assessments of our membership, discussions with our industry sponsors, and development of a formal strategic plan. The clear long-term objective is to identify key topics most impactful to the practicing urologist and to provide state-of-the-art continuing professional development. The Royal College’s direction towards determining competency of our residents in training will likely evolve from our trainees into similar requirements for practicing urologists. With that in mind, we are proactively creating educational initiatives directed at our membership so that we have the capacity to protect our members from any future educational requirements.

Our winter executive meeting, an event held each January in in Montreal, is just around the corner. There, your executive members review activity and determine goals of the association for the next few months. It is also a time when we hope to share feedback from our members of what new services and products you want us to develop. Please feel free to send Tiffany Pizioli, our Executive Director (Tiffany. Pizioli@cua.org), myself (President@cua.org), or any other member of the executive (http://www.cua.org/en/about-cua) an email with what you’d like us to do to enhance your practice or to provide a new or different service.

The final touches are now being laid for the upcoming CUA Annual Meeting in Halifax, where we have an exciting, interactive program with an amazing cohort of international speakers, including:

• – Jamie Campbell, MEd, BEd, BA (Hon) (Toronto, ON) Director of Organization Development & Volunteer Services, North York General Hospital

• – Benjamin Canales, MD, MPH, (Gainesville, FL) Associate Professor of Urology, Department of Urology, University of Florida College of Medicine

• – Robert Flanigan, MD, FACS, (Maywood, IL) Albert J. Speh Jr. and Claire R. Speh Professor and Chair, Department of Urology, Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine; AUA President

• – Brian Goldman, MD (Toronto, ON) Broadcaster and Physician

• – Freddie Hamdy, MD, (Oxford, England) University of Oxford, Nuffield Professor of Surgery; Head, Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences; Professor of Urology; Honorary Consultant Urological Surgeon; Fellow of Balliol College

• – Venkata Jayanthi, MD (Columbus, OH) Chief of Pediatric Urology, Nationwide Children’s Hospital; Clinical Professor of Surgery, Department of Urology, Ohio State University College of Medicine

• – Lorraine LeGrand-Westfall, MD, FRCSC, CMPA (Ottawa, ON) Director of Regional Affairs; Chief Privacy Officer – Canadian Medical Protective Association

• – Kevin McNamara, Former Deputy Minister of Health and Wellness for Nova Scotia

• – Anne Pelletier Cameron, MD, FRCSC (Ann Arbor, MI) Associate Professor of Urology, University of Michigan, Director of the Clinical Urology Research Endeavor (CURE)

• – Hossein Sadeghi-Nejad, MD, FACS (Newark, NJ) Professor of Surgery/Urology, Rutgers New Jersey Medical School; Chief of Urology, New Jersey Veterans Affairs Hospitals; Director of the Center for Male Reproductive Medicine (private practice) Hackensack University Medical Center

• – Joel Sheinfeld, MD (New York City, NY) Deputy Chief, Urology Service; Florence and Theodore Baumritter/Enid Ancell Chair of Urologic Oncology, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre

• – Run Wang, MD, FACS (Houston, TX) Professor of Surgery (Urology) and Cecil M. Crigler, MD Chair of Urology, University of Texas Medical School; Professor of Urology, Director of Sexual Medicine, Department of Urology, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center – President of SMSNA

• – CUASF Lecturer: Peter Black, MD, FRCSC (Vancouver, BC) Urologic Oncologist, Vancouver General Hospital; Senior Research Scientist, Vancouver Prostate Centre; Professor, Department of Urologic Sciences, University of British Columbia

I look forward to seeing you in Halifax!