Workstreams

The aim of the Education Workstream was to

• ensure education for AKI is prioritised and appropriately resourced across primary and secondary care
• work towards the development of a public awareness campaign.

Working with many stakeholders – RCGP, HEE, GMC, RCP and other Royal Colleges, CPPE, RPS, Trusts, patients, universities and others, the Workstream identified and then signposted NHS staff to current effective and endorsed resources for training on the presentation, management and treatment of AKI on the Think Kidneys website. The Workstream engaged with healthcare education providers on the delivery of AKI education. Our aim was to make the Think Kidneys website the ‘go to’ place for educational resources and links to resources for all healthcare professionals regardless of sector in which they are working. New resources developed by the Workstream members included an AKI specific online module for GPs endorsed and accessed through the Royal College of General Practitioners website, information and feature articles in the nursing press. We worked with the Centre for Pharmacy Postgraduate Education to develop their learning campaign for Autumn 2015. Uptake was good and the resources well received (see page 30 of the Think Kidneys National AKI Programme – Review and Evaluation Report).

Linking people with existing proven educational resources demonstrates the NHS’s ability to share and learn from high quality materials. Many of the educational resources on the Think Kidneys website have been developed in-house by NHS organisations with the aim of increasing awareness and understanding

of the risk, prevention, detection, management and treatment of AKI. Sharing in this way prevents reinventing the wheel and is ultimately cost effective. Most of the Education Workstream’s work was undertaken by individuals or small working groups and we met virtually and occasionally face to face. We found this to be the most effective way to progress our work, playing to the skills and strengths of team members.

A sub-group of the Workstream came together to develop a public campaign. This was not officially part of the original plan for Think Kidneys, but when a survey of the public, as part of early communications activity told us that only 50% of the population know that their kidneys make urine, the Board felt we had a responsibility to respond to this challenge. While we initially thought we could educate the public about the risk and impact of AKI, we realised this would be too complex a topic and that we had to start with simple messages about the importance of kidneys for health.

The campaign comprised a set of five thought provoking posters with very clear messages, which were produced for use across the NHS. Four of the posters were endorsed by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society for display in pharmacies. Twenty thousand posters are now on display across the NHS. An animated infographic was also created for the website and is displayed in GP practices and hospital clinics across the country. A media campaign followed which was kick-started by a 30-minute focus on Radio 2’s Jeremy Vine show, supported by GP Dr Sarah Jarvis. Targeting specific media outlets, the campaign reached around 20 million people and won the Campaign of the Year Award at the Health Business Awards in November 2016. Challenges for the Education Workstream were primarily around the low baseline of understanding of AKI across the NHS and among the public. Calibrating complex professional and public messages was also taxing but because of the wide range of people engaged in our work with special skills and experience, we were able to succeed in delivering on our plans. Co-ordinating our work with the outputs of the other Workstreams was also complicated at times. However, these challenges were overcome over time and as Co-Chairs of the Education Workstream we are delighted with all our work, believing as we do that we have contributed to real change and improvement in the care of people at risk of, or with, AKI.