EUROPEAN PRESSURE ULCER ADVISORY PANEL

In my first letter as the new President of the European Pressure Ulcer Advisory Panel I would like to welcome all the members of the society and also all the delegates attending the Fifth annual meeting of EPUAP in Le Mans (France). The theme of this year's meeting 'Education - Experience we can share' is best giving the significance of confrontation in order to improve our knowledge in managing pressure ulcers. The conference will be held jointly with the PERSE (Prevention Education Recherche Soins Escarres), a French wound healing society which is holding its annual meeting in Le Mans. In the future I would like to encourage similar joint meetings between European and National organizations to avoid multiple conferences in the same year, and to enable our corporate members to collaborate more in the society activities. The annual meeting continues to be the most important event among the activities of EPUAP, but I would also like to mention the EPUAP Review, edited by Michael Clark, and the new EPUAP web site. These tools are real and attractive ways of communication and I would like to encourage all members to be part of the contributions needed to spread our mission on pressure ulcers.

Our society is growing rapidly to achieve the highest level of care standard in the management of pressure ulcers. To date there has been a high level of interest in all the activities running inside our group which we hope will continue during the next few years. The countries represented inside EPUAP has reached a total number of sixteen, and this is a true manifestation of the global-European involvement of our group. There are many ongoing activities at this time inside the panel, from the pressure ulcer prevalence project to the various EPUAP working parties, which are going to update their studies in Le Mans.

Finally I would like to thank the two past presidents of EPUAP - Prof Keith Harding and Prof Jeen Haalboom - for the outstanding impetus they gave to our panel, and to conclude with a statement which I think truly represents the spirit of our society:

'A well-conducted medical society may be of the greatest help in stimulating the practitioner to keep up habits of scientific study.'
                          Sir William Osler (AEQUANIMITAS, 1903)

Marco Romanelli
President Elect