A comprehensive guide for clinicians working in urgent care and emergency departments has been launched by GIRFT to support the provision of emergency urological care.  

Developed in collaboration with members of the British Association of Urological Surgeons (BAUS) and the British Association of Urological Nurses (BAUN), it incorporates valuable input from clinicians across community, primary, and secondary care representing the wide multidisciplinary teams involved in urgent and emergency urological care. 

The guide provides a useful checklist for the delivery of standard pathways for managing common urological emergencies, including guidance on urgent community care, establishing cold-site provisions for urological emergencies, developing hot clinic services, and enhancing workforce training for both medical and non-medical staff.  

It also focuses on the same-day emergency care (SDEC) principles and ambulatory pathways for urology. These pathways allow suitable patients to bypass the emergency department, attending directly via community settings, primary care, NHS 111, or ambulance services. This approach ensures patients are seen, assessed, and treated rapidly in an ambulatory setting, alleviating pressure on emergency departments.  

Often same-day emergency care (SDEC) provision is generic in nature and delivered by multidisciplinary teams including resident doctors, Advanced Clinical Practitioners (ACPs), nurses and other healthcare professionals, with consultant support and expertise. The pathways illustrated in the guide are intended to enable the non-specialist clinician to deliver timely and appropriate urological care and they indicate where it is felt that specific input from the urology teams is advisable. In this way, it is hoped the guide will support all clinicians working in urgent and emergency care services to provide high quality and timely care to patients.