By Louise Wells, Co-chair of KQuIP, British Renal Society Vice President – Clinical Development and Advanced Clinical Specialist Renal Dietitian
Attending the annual British Renal Society/Renal Association conference offers multiple opportunities for reflection and learning. Catching up with friends and colleagues across the multidisciplinary team; networking – sharing thoughts, ideas and experiences; being inspired by, and celebrating the excellent work taking place within the renal community; wondering why you ‘never thought of that’, and returning home with the reminder of just what we find so rewarding and exciting about working in this fantastic multi professional specialism.
UKKW conference 2016 provided all that and more, with the theme of improving kidney care through quality research and team working and the launch of KQuIP – the Kidney Quality Improvement Partnership. The energy and interest which was evident in the KQuIP launch session and right across four days of thought-provoking and educational sessions will have ensured that we left inspired with enthusiasm for applying new ideas and learning to our local units. A few weeks on from conference and fully back into the usual demands and pressures of work, it’s easy to lose sight of that enthusiasm, engagement and momentum. A good time then, I thought, to revisit and reflect on a few Quality Improvement sound bites from two of the key conference sessions.
Richard Fluck in his Mallick Lecture, ‘Improving Care as Part of the Day Job’ talked about the potential for KQuIP to finish off the ‘model for change jigsaw’, in its ambition to develop and support a sustainable platform for change and QI. He acknowledged that we have huge amount of assets in renal to support the achievement of this ambition; with shared vision and values and a workforce wanting to improve.
In the same session, Wendy Baird, in her presentation ‘Less is More’, gave us a great definition of Quality Improvement, which completely sums up the KQuIP initiative:
‘Doing things better’ (Improvement)
‘Doing things differently’ (Innovation)
‘Finding something new’ (Research)
The talk by Rob Elias in the KQuIP launch session on the London Network Peer Review Project attracted a lot of interest. By sharing best practice and protocols, peer review offers opportunities to support the QI agenda through quality assurance and learning from each other. I can only think that part of any peer review process should include comparisons in staffing levels and roles when examining the reasons behind variation and in looking to support change and improvement in outcomes. This was touched on again in a comment made during the UK Kidney Research Consortium session, calling for ‘an expanded workforce to allow time to think, network, share, communicate and take part in research’.
The KQuIP agenda is ambitious and focusses on improving quality across all aspects of MDT working – research, education, clinical practice and clinical development. The strength and sustainability of KQuIP lies in its core asset of being by the renal community and for the renal community. I agree that in our cohesive renal community we already have many bits of the jigsaw in place, and I’m excited that KQuIP will support and provide challenges and opportunities for individuals, at all levels and in all areas of the renal multidisciplinary team, to get involved in improvement projects, support innovation and research, engage with QI learning and take on leadership roles.
The challenge for us all now is to maintain the momentum by continuing to engage with and support the KQuIP process outlined by Graham Lipkin in his blog.
At the end of his lecture Richard Fluck invited us to challenge ourselves every day to do something a little better, and Wendy Baird talked about taking small steps to achieve improvements in quality.
As a dietitian, I can’t write something without including a reference to food, so I finish with what feels like a perfect Quality Improvement quote from Fernand Point – a French Chef considered to be the father of modern French cuisine:
‘Success is the sum of a lot of small things done correctly’.