There is no elevator to success. You have to take the stairs
The founding years of the Urology Clinic Mannheim coincide with a time of diverse opinions and student protests throughout Western Europe: the 1970s. The UMM's III Medical Clinic is relocated from the campus in the Wohlgelegen district to a second site in the Waldhof district, a traditional working-class neighborhood known for its soccer club. The university situation is tense due to increasing student numbers and is in a state of upheaval when the Faculty of Clinical Medicine at the University of Mannheim unanimously decides in December 1970 to apply for the establishment of a Chair of Urology.
At the same time, an attitude prevails in surgery that abandons the integralist viewpoint of an all-encompassing subject and promotes subject differentiation. In the long term, this promotes the emergence of the Urology Clinic by comparison with anesthesia and neurosurgery, which can also no longer be represented by staff trained only in general surgery. Thus, in the Clinic for Blood Diseases and Malignant Tumors, a urology department is established, initially through the formation of a section, then a department and finally an independent chair, whereby the spatial separation of the clinics is not initially implemented.
Prof. Dr. med. Joachim W. Potempa is the first to be appointed to the chair and becomes director of the clinic. While he expanded the clinic, the campus in Wohlgelegen was also extended and modernized with numerous new buildings. On October 1, 1987, Prof. Dr. med. Peter Alken took over the post of Chief Physician and moved with the Urology Clinic into the new building on the campus in the Wohlgelegen district in 2003. After 21 years of dedication to the advancement of the field, Prof. Alken retires; he is succeeded on October 1, 2008 by his student Prof. Maurice Michel.
From then on, the focus is even more on promoting young talent. In 2019, the department won the MaReCum Teaching Award for "Best Department". The guiding principle for the urology and urosurgery department headed by Professor Michel is the synthesis of specialist expertise, state-of-the-art technology and the implementation of the latest findings from science and research in dialog with urologists in private practice. We now treat an average of 5,000 patients a year with around 150 employees from a wide range of disciplines. Interdisciplinary cooperation with other specialist areas is a central element of our work and is reflected in the Uro-oncology Center, with its three modules: prostate, kidney and bladder. Complex, large DaVinci assisted or open surgical operations, which require a high level of expertise, are distinct focal points of the clinic and are reflected in the formation of competence centers.
For us, human attention and care are just as important as all technical innovations and medical expertise. "50 years of urology have always been associated with restructuring and change. Human and technical challenges were and still are the order of the day," explains the head of the urology function, Ms. Heidi Wagner, who describes herself as a veteran "I have been working in this clinic in the outpatient area for 39 years. In 1999, I took over as head of the newly established urology function, consisting of the urological outpatient clinic and urological X-ray. Over the years, many new instruments have been developed, particularly in the field of endourology, and we have always been "at the forefront"!"
