Supportive Kidney Care Perspectives

• Research type

  Research Study

• Full title

  An exploration of patient, caregiver, and healthcare professional perspectives of supportive kidney care

• IRAS ID

  339180

• Contact name

  Andrew C Nixon

• Contact email

  andrew.nixon@lthtr.nhs.uk

• Sponsor organisation

  Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

• Duration of Study in the UK

  0 years, 6 months, 0 days

• Research summary

  Supportive kidney care aims to improve the quality of life of people living with, and dying from, kidney disease. It does so by supporting people’s physical and emotional health, as well as addressing social, spiritual, and informational needs. It is suitable for people of any age, including those receiving dialysis, conservative care, and transplantation.

  The Renal Service Transformation Programme is a UK wide scheme to improve kidney disease care. The programme outlines important principles for delivering supportive kidney care. These include:
  1) How people are identified, supported, and managed to meet their supportive care needs,
  2) Ensuring that supportive care is provided by a range of kidney health professionals,
  3) Involving other healthcare services that may be relevant to a person’s care,
  4) Measuring how well kidney services provide supportive care to improve quality of care.
  To work out how best that to apply these principles in UK Kidney Units, it is important to understand which parts of supportive care are important, valued and acceptable to people with kidney disease, caregivers and/or family members, and health professionals involved in caring for people with kidney disease. This project will ask these individuals to take part in group discussions. These discussions will ask people:
  1) What they understand by the term ‘supportive care’,
  2) About their experiences of supportive care
  3) What they consider ‘good’ supportive care,
  4) What they think is helpful and difficult to providing supportive care in kidney units

  Group members will be invited to share their own thoughts, ideas and experiences regarding these questions. Meetings will be led by two organizers and limited to 60-90 minutes. Two people from each discussion group will be invited to attend a final workshop. Members of the workshop will be asked to use the findings from the group discussions to describe good supportive care and how kidney services should provide this. Patient and caregiver group members will be reimbursed for time and travel expenses.

  As well as telling us how the RSTP principles should be adopted, the findings will be shared with kidney charities, presented at scientific conferences and published in kidney journals.
  

• REC name

  West Midlands - South Birmingham Research Ethics Committee

• REC reference

  24/WM/0091

• Date of REC Opinion

  21 May 2024

• REC opinion

  Further Information Favourable Opinion