ECCO 3rd Council of National Representatives Meeting, held adjacent to UEG Week 2023

For this edition of the Council of National Representatives Meeting, the ECCO Governing Board introduced a new format. 

The programme was organised in main blocks of topics particularly relevant for the national level with plenary presentations followed by break-outs. Participants were free to select their preferred break-out sessions.

This new format had the aim to increase further the attractiveness of this meeting by encouraging active participant discussions and providing more open discussion time according to various thematic interests of all meeting participants.

In the Opening Remarks & Update on ECCO Initiatives, Britta Siegmund (ECCO President) provided a preview of the REACH Strategy launch that subsequently took place at ECCO’24. Ciara Drohan (Vice President of EFCCA) complemented the opening part of the meeting with an Update on Flagship Initiatives of EFCCA.                          

In the subsequent thematic part about the ECCO Guidelines and Consensus projects, Gionata Fiorino (ECCO Education Officer) provided a short overall summary of their relevance at the national level. This served as preparation for the break-out discussions in which participants could select between the topics of “Adapting to low and lower-middle-income resources” or “Guidelines Methodology.  

The next section of presentations and break-out discussions was dedicated to “Education Going Regional and Local,” in which Wladyslawa Czuber-Dochan (as N-ECCO Chair) presented together with Gionata an overview of ECCO Educational Workshops and the IBD Nurse Education Programme. As e-Learning Ambassador of ECCO, Pascal Juillerat outlined the newest developments on the ECCO e-Learning platform, which is complementing the live-event education. The following break-out session then allowed to discuss concrete examples of implementation – including EFCCA projects on patient education.         

The afternoon sessions revolved around the broader thematic framework of Quality Standards of Care, with a presentation of UR-CARE by Filip Baert (Managing Director of the ECCO Research Unit, IBDIM GmbH) and a presentation of the E-QUALITY project by Alissa Walsh (ECCO Project Coordinator). The break-out sessions were then dedicated to the UR-CARE Ambassadors & National Study Group interactions, to Nurse Research, to the Use of PROs, to the N-ECCO Consensus Update, and a discussion of future patient representative involvement in the E-QUALITY project.

Throughout the day and especially in the break-out sessions, all ECCO Governing Board Members joined forces in co-moderating and highly appreciated the multifaceted input of all meeting participants.

Over the past months, the ECCO Governing Board worked on a list of concrete implementation points resulting from the highly productive discussions of the meeting. The overall conclusion of this meeting was that “Equitable access to IBD care” and “Holistic Care” are of key relevance.

• In the field of education, it will be important that stakeholder groups and organisations should aim to complement efforts.
• For the broader topic of “quality of care”, the diverse situations on the local and national levels should be taken into account for the ECCO Guidelines, the E-QUALITY project and the UR-CARE platform.
• Enhanced involvement of nurses and patients in ECCO projects aims for improved and simplified access to the outcomes of these projects.

ECCO will therefore aim at:

• offering Educational Workshops programmes targeted to the multidisciplinary team and adaptable to the local needs
• disseminating the e-Guide as a freely accessible visualisation tool of the ECCO Guidelines on a global level
• exploring to enhance the e-Learning platform in collaboration with partner societies to offer complementary and accessible educational opportunities
• continuing to integrate the patient perspective in ECCO initiatives
• fostering the collaboration between N-ECCO and EFCCA to set a basis for IBD nurses and patient organisations to also work together on the national level.

ECCO has already started to implement these goals and is looking forward to the follow-up discussion at the next National Representatives Meeting adjacent to UEGW’25.

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