EU-ACME celebrates 20 years!

In the beginning 

The EU ACME was initiated by the European Board of Urology (EBU) in collaboration with the European Association of Urology (EAU), and officially founded in 2004 as a joint committee, with the two associations being represented by three members each. Prof. Madersbacher was appointed the first chairman of this committee.

Prof. Madersbacher: “The idea of having a joint committee in which the EBU was the regulatory body and the EAU was the organisational body was created by Prof. Frans Debruyne, who was the General Secretary of the EAU at that time.” 

According to Prof. Madersbacher, the foundation of the EU-ACME generated considerable discussion and differing opinions within the EBU. Prior to 2004, the EBU and EAU had been at odds on various matters, though both organisations brought valuable ideas to the table. The main distinction between the two was financial: the EAU, with revenue from companies participating in its Annual Congress and other events, was relatively well-funded, while the EBU faced challenges in securing corporate support. At the time, the EBU was already struggling to cover the expenses of its office in Rotterdam, so while some board members welcomed the EAU's offer to relocate to Arnhem, others were critical and preferred to remain in Rotterdam. In the end the majority of the EBU board voted to move from Rotterdam to Arnhem.

“In the same year of the EBU relocating, the EU-ACME was founded, again not without any concerns. A significant number of board members of the EBU disagreed with the EU-ACME formation, driven by the fear that the EBU was going to be ‘eaten up’ by the EAU. Prof. Rien Nijman (NL) and I explained several times that a joint committee was unavoidable. The EBU lacked the funding to purchase the technology required for the implementation of a European CME system and our opinion was that it was better to join forces with the EAU.” 

“In this transition period, the EBU accreditation committee had their regular meeting in October 2004 in Obidos (PT) but already in the same year, two meetings were held in Paris for the new EU-ACME committee and with Prof. Pierre Teillac (FR), who was at that time General Secretary of the EAU. The first person who administered the EU-ACME was Ms. Linda Van De Paal (NL) (50 % EBU and 50% EAU), and after two years she was followed by Mrs. Beata Adamczyk (NL), who is still the manager of the EU-ACME team now.”

 “Already when starting the EU-ACME activities in 2004, the committee had to recognise that CME is a sensitive issue in some countries. It involves a lot of politics, and some medical associations were reluctant to participate. But with joint forces, step-by-step, the vision of a European-wide accreditation system for urologists became a reality.”

“Looking back to the start and comparing it with the programme of today, it is evident that the fear that some of the EBU board members had of the EBU getting “eaten up” by the EAU has fortunately not been realised. The EBU still exists and has a good ongoing cooperative relationship with the EAU”.

Challenges and opportunities 

Prof. Nijman was elected as EU-ACME chair in 2012 and held this position until 2020. Although, he was there from the very beginning of the EU-ACME journey when Prof. Madersbacher was the chair. He remembers clearly that it took a long time for the programme to gain momentum and recalls Prof. Madersbacher travelling to all the national societies in Europe to promote joining the programme and encouraging them to get involved. 

Prof. Nijman: “Every year we had a brainstorm meeting with the EBU in Portugal. This was organised by the late prominent urologist Prof. Alberto Matos Ferreira (PT) who wrote a brochure to define the CME programme, which is still the basis of the EU-ACME programme today. It has been elaborated on, refined and retuned, but the basis is the same.” 

“The EU-ACME committee is a special committee because of the equal representation of the EAU and the EBU. The chair is always an EAU board member but the committee members, half of them are EAU and half of them are EBU. We met during the National Societies Meeting in Noordwijk each year. The unique thing is that it is a committee combining the activities of the EAU and EBU, and that was one of the most prominent reasons why it has become so successful.” 

“In the beginning people were reluctant to participate in the whole system because most countries in Western Europe had their own systems in place so they were reluctant to adopt another system. It was the countries from Eastern Europe that had joined the EAU that were very positive about the whole system as they wanted to have all their programmes accredited and systems were not in place in many of their countries. Hence, there was a lot of participation from Eastern European urologists.”

“It was decided that every member of the EAU could participate in the EU-ACME programme, and it was free of charge for them. It took some time and a lot of hard work, but eventually the programme became popular with the help of all the accreditation steps being automated and user friendly. The other thing that made it more attractive for people was the option of a direct link between the CME system of the EAU and their national system.

For example, when we are talking about Dutch urology, once an accreditation is in the EU-ACME system in Arnhem, there is a link to the Dutch national system, and all the credits are automatically linked. As a urologist, you don’t need to do anything. We have made a couple of attempts with other national societies but there are some barriers with different countries or regions having regulations. For example, Germany has different regulations in each region.”

A big achievement 

“The EU-CME programme is an example for many other medical specialties/fields in Europe. Urology has always been on the forefront to develop new ideas. We were the first to have European Board examinations (1992). That has now been introduced by many other societies.” According to Prof. Nijman, the system is not only used by the EAU members, but also adopted by some other medical organisations, such as the members of the European Society of Paediatric Urology (ESPU) and the International Continence Society (ICS).

Prof. Nijman suggests that the next step of development could possibly be to use the EU-CME system for re-certification for urologists in Europe on a voluntary basis. 

Future ambitions and progress 

Elected in 2020, the current Chair Prof. Babjuk shares the current committee’s visions and initiatives for the future of the EU-ACME programme. 

Prof. Babjuk: “As we celebrate the 20th anniversary this year, I am particularly proud of how user-friendly the system works for our members. Today we have more than 20,000 EU-ACME members, medical professionals and junior members who can participate in more than 1,500 registered and accredited events and activities. The participation is automatically registered, and all members receive regular automated reports. In 2021, the EU-ACME programme extended its services to include more than 3,000 registered nurses in a similar programme called EU-ACNE.” 

“A goal for the future is to improve the cooperation with individual national societies. We are preparing a campaign, which should further increase the awareness for services of the EU-ACME Office towards participating national urological societies. It will also address the organisers of locally accredited meetings. We are also working on the support of credit reciprocity between different accreditation bodies allowing EU-ACME member credit recognition in the country they practise.” 

“We have several plans, like improving the online application process via MyCME for accreditation of distance learning, blended events, and online educational platforms. We would like to continue with the programme of certification of training centres hosting European Urology Scholarship Programmes (EUSP), with assistance in pre- and post ESU course knowledge testing during the EAU Annual Congress. We hope that all these activities can further support the quality of urological education in Europe.” 

For more information, visit the EU-ACME programme website.