Jeffrey A. Albaugh, PhD, APRN, CUCNS, on editing the second edition of SUNA’s Core Curriculum

In this video, Jeffrey A. Albaugh, PhD, APRN, CUCNS, shares the process of developing and editing the "SUNA Core Curriculum for Urologic Nursing (Second Edition) - Adult Urology." Albaugh is an advanced practice urology clinical nurse specialist, research doctor, and director of sexual health at NorthShore University Health System in Chicago, Illinois.

Transcription:

Please describe the background behind the "SUNA Core Curriculum for Urologic Nursing (Second Edition) - Adult Urology."

The original core curriculum came about because we really felt there was a great need for a comprehensive resource for nurses, advanced practice, nurses, physician assistants, medical assistants, people working in urology. And so the Society of Urologic Nurses and Associates felt that it was really important to have a major resource to prepare people for urology certification, as well as just to a resource to have on hand in your clinic, or wherever, to refer to when you had questions, and especially with, not just to focus on the medical issues, but also from a nursing paradigm, so that the nurses would have some of the information they need about like the logistics of doing a bladder instillation or whatever the procedure might be, in addition to all the medical information as well. That was published in 2017 [and was an] amazing resource. I had one in both of my clinics, and used it all the time. Of course, SUNA always looks at their publications. Are they current? Do they need to be updated? This is such an essential, critical resource, we wanted to make sure that it was up to date. And so they started looking at creating the core again. The original core had pediatrics in it. It had everything in it, but the Society of Urologic Nurses and Associates Board of Directors decided it's such a great resource, but maybe it could be turned into a couple different resources and separate resources. They decided they wanted to split it up into 1 adult version, which would be a version for nurses, advanced practice nurses, physician assistants, anybody who was interested, and then a more basic version, because they felt there was a real need for the medical assistants and people new to urology to have a little different, simpler resource that wasn't quite as overwhelming as the core. The original core from 2017, there's a lot to it, and it can feel a little overwhelming. And so they felt maybe there could be a more basic version of the core for people at the medical assistant/the nursing assistant level, who were working in it, as well as people who are brand new to urology, and just wanted to get an introduction to it. So they had that version, and then they wanted to split pediatrics out and have the pediatric community take that version, take responsibility for it, and move it forward. They came to me about the adult version, which is the version that I would be using in my clinic. It's for anyone from novice to expert. It is chock full of information. It is 707 pages long, so it's got a lot of information. It got figures and tables, and pretty much we believe everything you need for urology to understand urologic practice on a day-to-day basis as a nurse, an advanced practice nurse, a physician assistant working in the field of urology.

So it was to update it, that was the original thought, and then maybe to split it into 3 useful resources that would be targeted at a little bit different audiences. Susanne A. Quallich, [PhD, ANP-BC, NP-C, CUNP, FAANP], took over and did the more basic version for people new to urology, and they asked me to do this adult version, and I was honored and happy to work on it.

It was a huge endeavor. I don't know that I completely understood what a huge endeavor it was at the time. We had wonderful authors on the original core, and so I could go back and go to some of those authors. Not all of the authors were available and able to do it, certainly, so I had to find new authors for quite a few chapters, and then we're looking for experts in the field on those particular topics, because we want those particular authors to be at the top of their game in that particular field. The task is really to update and streamline, make this as user friendly of a resource as possible. The original editors, there were 3 of them, and they all 3 worked on that original core, and on this particular adult version, I was the only editor. It was a daunting task, although I will say the original core was exceptional, so I had a wonderful framework from which to work. My job was to see, how can I make it as user friendly, streamlined and efficient, yet containing all the resources it needs? Not an easy job, because you don't want it to be totally overwhelming, but you want it to have everything essential in there for urologic practice. We tried to clean out some of the things that weren't specific to urology practice but at the same time, some of the medical practice influences urology practice too. One of the things we did was create a brand-new chapter on medical conditions that affect urology. We just really wanted to talk about things like multiple sclerosis, stroke, heart disease, diabetes, different things that can affect urologic, conditions. So we created a new chapter on that, because that was not in the original resource, and we thought that would be really important to highlight.

We did set up the new adult core differently. It flows different. In the old core, there was a section on men and a section on women, and we did not split it out that way. We just moved through urology. For example, when we did the chapter on sexually transmitted infections, it is a chapter on both men and women. We merged the chapters that were previously, 1 was for men and 1 was for women. So we streamlined a few things that way.

We found some wonderful experts. It was pretty exciting. At the University of Texas, there was a group of physician assistants who worked on a chapter as a group. We were really excited to have them as authors, and they did an amazing job on it. The task was really to find the very best experts and create the greatest resource we could and build on an already-amazing resource. And I hope we accomplished it. It was a journey that was challenging at times because, of course, tables, information expire. Lots of things have to be updated, and we want to make sure that we have the latest evidence-based information in there. And so that's what we did.

This transcription was AI generated and edited by human editors for clarity.