EAU Patient Information initiative expands – new translations online

Tue, 23 Sep 2014

The Patient Information project of the European Association of Urology (EAU) continues to grow. Translations of major urological topics such as kidney cancer and benign prostatic enlargement (BPE) have been recently published online in Croatian, Spanish, Bulgarian, Turkish and Polish.

EAU Patient Information seeks to provide urologists with a readily-available tool for helping patients understand their situation and become better informed about their treatment. Therefore, it is important that the quality of the information remains constant throughout the translation process. This would not be possible without the support and hard work of various national urological societies that provide resources for translation.

Finding reliable information online is already difficult for both patients and doctors: “the main issue online is that information is not filtered. It could be incomplete, biased, or downright wrong” according to Dr. Javier Mayor de Castro (ES), who participated in the translations. In his view, EAU Patient Information addresses these shortcomings because it “offers understandable and quality information, that has the quality seal of a high-level scientific organization.” Moreover, Dr. Tadeusz Hessel (PL) adds, “it is an easy way for the patients to be informed about urological diseases. We help patients by giving them access to unbiased knowledge, in our own language.”

In line with the goal of adapting patient information to local needs, each society chooses the best way to approach the translations. This means some societies hire medical translators to work on localizing the information, while others encourage residents to translate texts themselves. In both cases, there is an extensive revision process that allows for quality texts to be uploaded for the benefit of both doctor and patient. The language used is patient friendly, and the labelled illustrations are also a useful tool for consultation.

Participating in the translations, either by revising for quality or translating directly, has helped doctors from around Europe to think of the best way to explain the basics of urology to patients. Moreover, it has provided a source of unbiased information that would otherwise be unavailable in many of the languages featured on the website. Further, participating in this project fosters “scientific and practical cooperation between different national societies, such as the Bulgarian national society, and the EAU,” in the words of Prof. Dimitar Mladenov (BG).

Visit the website of the EAU Patient Information >

If you are interested in translating EAU Patient Information, contact Monique van Hout at the EAU.