[Nurse's role in functional urology]

The management of patients in functional urology is complex and requires the expertise of the medical team but also of the nurse team. The aim of this article is to detail the roles of the nurses in functional urology.

Exchanges with the nurses of our unit, analysis of the literature using the terms "nurse", "urology", "urodynamics" in the PubMed search engine, and a search for regulatory texts relating to the practice of nurses in urology units were conducted.

Since the creation of the Inter-University Diploma of Nurse Expert in Urology in 2002 and the inter-professional cooperation protocols in 2009, the urologist can rely on the specific skills of nurses to optimise the patient's management: from endoscopic or urodynamic explorations, to stomatherapy or sexology, from therapeutic education to specialised treatments such as posterior tibial nerve stimulation, sacral neuromodulation or botulinum toxin injections. Their expertise is an undeniable asset in the patient support and for the quality of care. The cooperation protocols respond to the current problems of the healthcare system: attractiveness for paramedical professionals, medical demographics and ambulatory care. The increasingly frequent practice of multidisciplinary consultation meetings also gives them a coordinating role.

Nurses in functional urology plays a major role in diagnostic and therapeutic management as the patient's privileged contact and collaborator with the referring urologist.