May News

Welcome to our May newsletter.

We’ve been delighted to see so many of you at various events over the last couple of months, and hope you’ve enjoyed them as much as we have.

This newsletter we meet Rob, our Clinical Lead, and read about the events, fora and workshops we’ve hosted recently. If you weren’t one of the 250 people who attended workshops this time, or of the 90 who joined our leadership fora, then you’ll be able to join us for future events.

Meet the Team

This month, we meet Rob Elias, Clinical Lead. 

What do you enjoy about working with the LKN? I love the positive energy that almost invariably emerges when people from different groups come together.
I think people with kidney disease in London and their teams have long needed a joined up, consistent, collaborative approach to improving services and also strategic planning that goes beyond crisis management. The LKN is striving to help do that and I enjoy that work.

What is your advice to other people who might be interested in taking on a non-traditional role? Please do! Get in touch, come to a meeting or talk to one of the team, and then, crucially, let us know what you think is helpful and what is not.

Leadership Forum:

We were delighted to welcome Marina Russ Community learning disabilities nurse, and Senior Lecturer in Learning Disabilities Nursing at Kingston University to our February Leadership Forum.  People with learning disabilities have a shorter life expectancy and poorer health outcomes and a change to how we provide information can make a difference.  Marina fascilitated an interesting and useful forum. We heard why supporting people with learning disabilities differently is important, and things we can implement in practice.   Marina and Jaryn (renal CNS at Royal London Hospital) presented an case study about a person they’d supported together and reflected on how the joint working across renal and learning disability services had resulted in the best outcome for that person.

In March, the Supportive Care Workstream provided a helpful and thought-provoking oversight on the work they’ve done in 2023-24.  They focused on the benefits of site visits to understand the successes and issues faced locally, and reflected on the successes and challenges of their Supportive Care audit.  Developing relationships and joint working with nursing, medical, AHP, and data teams was key to their success, and provided the basis for further work and simplifying data collect and reporting.   Finally, Sarah Mackie demonstrated the Supportive Care and advanced Care Planning e-modules and explained how the content was developed and why it’s such an important self-directed learning resource.  While you’re need to register to access the module, including putting it into a basket and checking out, it is free to access with no payment required, regardless of where you work. You can find the module here: Learning Hub

Our next Forum be will in early June, and will look at ‘How do Networks work, and why is it relevant to me?’  – look out for the team meetings in your email soon, and contact us on lkn.londonkidneynetwork@nhs.net for more details

Events

We were thrilled to welcome so many of you to our events in March and April. From a transplant plan development day, to a QI for Leaders workshop, we welcomed around 250 of you to learn, share and help shape the future of kidney care in London. As well as hearing from experts and leaders in kidney care in London, we welcomed specialists from other clinical areas and across the country to support our learning. Thank you to everyone who spent time away from the Units to make the events so successful.

Transplant 5-year Plan Workshop:

The Transplant Collaborative Workstream are working to help address the growing demand for in-centre dialysis and to make sure all patients approaching end-stage kidney disease have timely and equitable access to transplantation.  The Workstream is leading the development of a 5-year Transplant Plan for London, aiming to increase the number of donors, ensure equitable access to transplantation services, and improve the long-term outcomes for patients with kidney transplants.  This plan is being co-created with representative from across London’s renal transplantation community, including community groups, commissioners, and referral units.

The workshop used themes, such as workforce, infrastructure, and patient & community engagement, to define the building blocks for the strategy’s further development​. Participants left the event feeling energised. Feedback was unanimously positive: “It was a good day spent”, “Good to see the right people in the room collaborating”, and “[the]Workshops had really good and strong content”.

The next steps will be to consolidate the feedback into the plan and an implementation plan. The first draft will mark another milestone in the trajectory of kidney transplantation in London for the next five years.

Vascular Access Nursing:

The Vascular Access (VA) Nursing Day was split into a morning session for VA Nurse leads, and an afternoon of training for dialysis nurses. The Nurse Leads spent time sharing practice and reflecting on complex cases together. They heard from experts across the country about service improvement initiatives and considered how to implement those in London.

In afternoon, the Nurse Leads show-cased their teaching skills, sharing their experience and knowledge with the 50 nurses who’d joined us. We heard from surgeons and an interventional radiologist to help better understand how vascular access is formed, how to avoid and manage aneurysms, and how to use ultrasound guidance to facilitate access. Special thanks goes to James, who shared his personal experience of how permanent vascular access and needling techniques impact on patients.

Feedback was overwhelmingly positive. Words used to describe the afternoon included “informative”, “productive”, “encouraging”, “excellent”, and “refreshing”. 98% of attendees planned to make a change in their practice as a result of the day.

We hope to run further sharing and training events in 2024-25 and will be turning suggestions from the day into improvement projects.

LKN Sharing and Engagement Event:

With over 100 attendees, we were excited to showcase the work happening across the LKN. We heard about progress being made across the whole kidney patient pathway, with presentations covering early intervention, transplant and home dialysis.
Katherine McNaughton, Head of Devolved Commissioning Development & Population Health at North Central London (NCL) ICS described the impact of joint working between the LKN and NCL.
Stephen Thomas, Clinical Director at the diabetes network discussed how they’ve approached Network led developments in diabetes care. His call to arms was for us to work together across cardio-renal-metabolic networks, taking the opportunity to significantly improve patient care and outcomes across these inter-related specialities.

Kidney Care UK, Kidney Research UK and the National Kidney Federation joined us with tables sharing their work and patient literature, with plenty of change to ask questions. There was also chance to look at the LKNs e-modules on Kidney Health Equity and Advanced care planning and Supportive care, and to speak to the clinical leads from the teams who’d created them.

The day closed with a keynote speech from Keith Siew talking about the UCL Comic Kidney Disease programme, which was fascinating and left us with lots to think about.

Feedback included “As a patient, it is simply massively empowering to sit in a room full of eager kidney disease stakeholders who are trying to improve various aspects of kidney health care”, “An efficient and educational day” and, “it was a really excellent and enjoyable educational meeting and I certainly got a great deal out of it”.

We look forward to show-casing and sharing more work and progress soon.

QI for Leaders Workshop:

This was an excellent full day training, led by Jen Leonard, Barts Health Quality Improvement Programme Director and Collect McQueen, Barts Health Senior Improvement Advisor, alongside Conor Bryne, Nephrologist at Barts Health LKN QI Lead. The day provided an excellent overview of quality improvement methodologies and how senior leads could use them in practice. We learnt about QI coaching, and how to best support teams in their improvement projects. We all overcame a reluctance to use role-play to practice what we’d learnt, and then finished the day considering how we can use NHS IMPACT to drive continuous improvement at work. (To learn more about NHS IMPACT, click here https://www.england.nhs.uk/nhsimpact/about-nhs-impact/).

Attendees reported an improved understanding of QI and felt better able to be a QI coach as a result of the day. People said the most useful parts were the practical tips, advise on use of data, and the role playing. Comments included “This was very good. Higher level than usual QI training and very well done” and “The exercise to interpret the data with coaching was really helpful”.

Summary:

Thank you to everyone who joined us and participated to make such successful days. We are planning to put all the presentations on the website soon, so if you couldn’t make it, you can still access some of the resources and learning.

UKKA Disparities Report

The UKKA published their disparities report in February this year. It highlights where inequalities continue to affect kidney patients and you can find it here https://ukkidney.org/audit-research/disparities-report

If you would like to learn more about kidney health inequalities, and how you can change your practice to reduce these, you can access the LKN Health Equities free, online training, here https://learninghub.kingshealthpartners.org/product?catalog=khp1244c

You will need to register with KHP and add the course to a ‘basket’ to access it, but there is no charge and everyone can access it, regardless of where they work.

Goodbye and Thank you

We want to say good-bye and thank you to four people who’ve been an important part of the LKN team over the last 2.5 years, who are now stepping back from their roles.  They have worked incredibly hard to develop resources, provide leadership and to shape how kidney services are provided across London.  They will be missed from the LKN leadership team, and we hope they’ll continue to be involved in different ways in the coming year.

Bhrigu Sood (Peritoneal Access Lead), Conor Byrne (QI Lead),  Paramit Chowdhury (Clinical Information Group), and Sarah Mackie (Multi-professional lead) THANK YOU!