Plymouth Hospitals NHS Trust – Plymouth CKD Team Blog
We’re in on TP-CKD and Working Hard for Success
Our initial experience left us feeling very proud of the strong representation from Plymouth that attended the first TP CKD event in London. We had so many people from Derriford Hospital that the organisers had to find extra seats!
On our return we applied our enthusiasm and energy into our 30, 60, 90-day strategy plan to get the wheels in motion. We set up focus group meetings with our local patient group – Friends of Derriford Hospital Kidney Unit. Unfortunately, the initial support from the Multi-disciplinary team quickly waned when it came to getting things done.
Despite this the CKD team and our amazing patient representatives –Andy Demaine, Sarah and Sean Yearling always delivered 100%. They participated in the distribution, explanation and completion of patient surveys, whilst actively promoting their patient support group. Without them we would have fallen at the first hurdle.
Together we continued to promote Think Kidneys at our Hospital Open Day and on World Kidney Day. This gave us another opportunity to champion everything renal which we did though photos in the hospitals, our Facebook and Twitter pages.
World Kidney Day
Hospital Open day
As well as CKD patients we also took the surveys to our Haemodialysis Unit and community hospitals, to ensure a broad range of people were included. The uptake of CKD patients was strong whereas the dialysis patients were a little more reticent and restricted due to their varying health conditions.
The surveys were completed quickly however the collection process was a struggle as it took around a month before they had been returned.
Once the PAM was completed we delivered this to our clinical governance and management meetings. Here we updated everyone on what had taken place so far and how we needed their involvement in the next stage, the PREM. There was a lot of reluctance from the rest of the MDT as it was perceived to add additional pressures onto their clinical workload. Without the consultants’ engagement it was very hard to progress.
At the next TP-CKD meeting in Birmingham, it was interesting to see other units had similar obstacles taking it forward. Hearing how others had managed to succeed in progressing helped us revaluate our situation. This re-energised us and gave us fresh ideas on how to move forward.
Back at Derriford Hospital it was decided we needed to re-launch the whole programme with full support from the consultant team. The success of the programme is reliant on the whole renal team being on board and engaged. The next clinical governance meeting was a fresh opportunity for the CKD team to reiterate the next steps of the programme. We expressed that all our renal population needed to be heard. Therefore, every patient attending a renal clinic onsite or at peripheral clinics should be offered the PREM survey starting for a month.
Sadly, there was reluctance to engage which is often the case with nurse led initiatives which was disappointing. The CKD team will continue to champion patient choices and involvement in their care. As a team it has given us the opportunity to re-evaluate, share and celebrate success with other renal units across the country.
By
Plymouth Chronic Kidney Disease Team (CKD)