Professor of Urology Maxime Kummeling: ‘The human dimension should guide us’
Inaugural lecture
As technology transforms healthcare and services come under mounting pressure, one question remains the same: Will the advice or treatment offered help patients lead the lives they want to live? In her inaugural lecture, Professor Maxime Kummeling stresses the importance of quality.
In your lecture, you will emphasise the importance of quality in urology. Why is that?
‘Because I see every day how much of an impact time, communication, peace and quiet, and appropriate care have on patients. And at the same time, how scarce time has become for healthcare professionals. As medicine has increasingly come to rely on technology and the administrative burden has grown, we risk losing sight of the human aspect. Good healthcare is about quality of life and quality of time, for both patients and healthcare providers. The human dimension should always guide us.’
What key research lines are you and your team working on?
‘Our department is working on research lines ranging from fundamental research into treatments for urological cancers to patient-centred care. Other lines focus on pelvic physiotherapy in Parkinson’s disease and sexological research. The concept of quality is central to our non-fundamental studies.
‘My personal focus is on research into functional disorders, such as incontinence and its impact on sexuality, and on functional consequences for people who have undergone pelvic surgery for cancer. I also hope to study how we can better predict which women with stress incontinence will benefit from pelvic physiotherapy and which from surgery.’
What role do education and healthcare play in your vision for this field?
‘Education and healthcare can’t exist alone. Good education doesn’t just teach future doctors what they can do – it teaches them what is and what isn’t worth doing. I want students and residents to learn to connect clinical knowledge to the life behind the symptoms: work, relationships, autonomy and time. And healthcare providers should also have enough quality time: so time to explain, listen and consider the options.’
What has stayed with you from the past few years?
‘Patients who later say they would have made different choices if they had better understood what a treatment would actually do to them. For example, men who, after prostate surgery, find that incontinence or changes in sexuality have more impact than they could imagine beforehand. Also, women with stress incontinence still too often hear they "just have to learn to live with it".'
What will society see as a result of your work?
‘My work should make care more accessible and appropriate, especially for women with stress incontinence. That means: better information, timely correct treatment, fewer unnecessary or prolonged trajectories, and more attention to how someone functions and experiences their time.’
‘For example, our research showed that knowledge about treatments and aids differs greatly between primary and secondary care, meaning women sometimes receive very different options depending on where they enter the system. This combination of underexposed consequences and unequal access confirms why it is so important to keep focusing on this.’
‘For oncological care, it means we look not only at technical outcomes like scans and complications, but also at how someone functions afterward: work, mobility, sexuality, and daily life. This makes care more humane and sustainable, with less wasted time for patients and caregivers.’
If we may dream, where do you hope the field will be in 10 to 15 years?
‘I hope we will then deliver care that truly starts with the person, not the condition. That treatments are chosen based on what suits someone, instead of ‘one size fits all’. And that artificial intelligence (AI) gives caregivers time back: time to listen, interpret, and decide together.’
‘I also dream of a healthcare system where women with incontinence no longer have to search, but automatically end up in the right place, with a clear care pathway and equal options. And of a urology where quality of life and quality of time are self-evident outcome measures.’
Maxime Kummeling’s inaugural lecture ‘Kwali-tijd in de Urologie: van eed tot AI’ will take place on 9 January and will be streamed live on the Leiden University website (in Dutch).