Urology
Welcome to the Barts Health urology service. Our experienced team diagnose and treat conditions affecting the kidneys, bladder and male genitalia. We are one of the country’s leading centres for urological disorders, and care for patients from across London, Essex and the rest of the country.
We work hard to continually improve our service by adopting the latest technologies and strive to provide a convenient and high-quality service for our patients. We welcome feedback from both patients and clinicians, which helps us to provide the best service that we can.
The team’s research programme includes cutting-edge investigations into prostate cancer, testicular cancer, renal cancer, bladder cancer, erectile dysfunction, stone disease and continence. The Urology team has an active teaching and training programme and we are the main hub for an East London urology training programme for registrars.
Why choose us
The Urology team has an active teaching and training programme and we are the main hub for an east London urology training programme for registrars. Our teaching is supported by advanced simulation training technology.
The team’s research programme includes cutting-edge investigations into prostate cancer, testicular cancer, renal cancer, bladder cancer, erectile dysfunction, stone disease and continence.
Urological cancer care
We understand how difficult it can be to find out that you have cancer and we will help in every way that we can.
We will arrange for you to have a one-to-one consultation with a doctor or special nurse, to provide you with personalised advice and targeted support.
You will be given contact details for the specialist nurses, so that you can call them at any time with your treatment related queries and concerns.
Once you have been through a treatment programme, and your urological cancer has stabilised, one of the nurses will continue to see you to provide emotional and psychological support until you feel well enough again.
For patients
There are many reasons why you may be referred to us for a specialist urology opinion. We want to make sure that the right tests are performed as soon as possible for you, so we have introduced pathways for some of the most common conditions.
You may already know the pathway that you have been referred on, and we have produced a guide to each pathway to help you to understand the process.
Non-cancer referrals
We care for:
- Patients with Lower Urinary Tract Symptoms
- Patients with frequent urinary tract infections
- Patients with kidney stones
- Men with “andrology” problems including erectile dysfunction, male infertility and problems with the penis, scrotum or testes
- Children with urological problems
- General urology problems that are not covered by the above list
Possible cancer referrals
Some patients are referred so that we can rapidly perform the necessary tests to determine whether they have cancer or not.
There are separate pathways for these, including patients who:
- have blood in the urine (haematuria)
- may have prostate cancer
- may have kidney cancer
- may have testicular cancer
- may have penis cancer
We understand how difficult it can be to find out that you have cancer and we will help in every way that we can.
We will arrange for you to have a one-to-one consultation with a doctor or specialist nurse, to provide you with personalised advice and targeted support.
You will be given contact details for the specialist nurses, so that you can call them at any time with your treatment related queries and concerns.
Once you have been through a treatment programme and your urological cancer has stabilised, our nurses will continue to see you to provide emotional and psychological support until you feel well enough again.
Our locations
We provide urology services from:
Some services are only available at one hospital. The table below identifies where the first stage of consultations and investigations will typically take place.
| Pathway | Whipps Cross Hospital | The Royal London Hospital | Newham Hospital |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lower urinary tract symptoms | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Frequent urinary tract infections | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Kidney stones | Yes | Yes | No |
| “Andrology” (erectile dysfunction, male infertility, penis/scrotum/testis problems) | Yes | No | No |
| Children’s urology | Yes | No | No |
| Possible cancer – blood in urine | Yes | No | No |
| Possible cancer – prostate | Yes | No | No |
| Possible cancer – kidney | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Possible cancer - testicular | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Possible cancer - penis | Yes | Yes | Yes |
For clinicians
Referral pathways and referral proforma
As part of our recent outpatient transformation project, we are developing streamlined pathways for common urological conditions. These will allow us to arrange any appropriate investigations as soon as the referral is received, minimising the time that patients need to wait for answers and ongoing care.
As such, we will soon be only accepting referrals that are accompanied by our referral proforma. This includes additional information about appropriate community management and basic investigation of common conditions, based on national guidelines where available.
Referrals will be made through Advice and Guidance (A&G) on e-RS and we welcome both referrals and requests for advice through this service.
The proforma has been adapted so that it can be imported to your patient management system to allow auto-population of results and demographics fields.
A short summary history is welcomed but we have worked hard with local GPs and the community outpatients transformation team to minimise the amount of time that this form takes for GPs to complete, as well as keeping mandatory investigations to a minimum.
We have worked with the Clinical Effectiveness Group at QMUL who have very kindly produced proforma templates for both eMIS and SystmOne that automatically populate patient demographic details and results fields. The most recent versions of these should be available through the template library in your clinical systems, and if you are unsure how to access this then please contact your local Primary Care Practice Facilitator as listed on the CEG website. A generic Word template is also available to download by clicking the link below, however, your local practice administrator will need to add the auto-populating fields in your clinical system to generate your own local template as a last resort. We highly recommend using the centrally-updated version instead of either eMIS or SystmOne template library.
Generic template - Urology Clinic Outpatient Referral TNW CEG (RP)
We welcome feedback on our pathways and referral proforma and would encourage you to contact us by post.
Our locations
We provide urology services from:
Some services are only available at one hospital. The table below identifies where the first stage of consultations and investigations will typically take place.
| Pathway | Whipps Cross Hospital | The Royal London Hospital | Newham Hospital |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lower urinary tract symptoms | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Frequent urinary tract infections | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Kidney stones | Yes | Yes | No |
| “Andrology” (erectile dysfunction, male infertility, penis/scrotum/testis problems) | Yes | No | No |
| Children’s urology | Yes | No | No |
| Possible cancer – blood in urine | Yes | No | No |
| Possible cancer – prostate | Yes | No | No |
| Possible cancer – kidney | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Possible cancer - testicular | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Possible cancer - penis | Yes | Yes | Yes |