Author: cstannard

Kings College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust Dr Kate Bramham, Clinical Senior Lecturer and Honorary Consultant Nephrologist In order to reduce the need for patients to visit hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic, we set up a mobile phlebotomy service for kidney patients at Kings. We initially contacted a local church charity who used medical vans for their work with homeless people, and they offered us the use…

Derby and Coventry renal unit have been working together on the KQuIP home therapies project, DAYLIfe, since January 2019. Here, Lindsay Chesterton from Derby renal unit shares why collaborating with different teams is important and how it has helped their project maintain momentum. Working in the NHS means that you are often surrounded by challenges. We can always strive for improvement but sometimes these obstacles can…

Paul Cockwell, KQuIP Co-Chair The major variation in clinical outcomes and patient reported experience between and within renal services is a stark reminder that the system is the major factor in the quality of patient experience and in ensuring that each patient has the opportunity for their best outcome. A fundamental goal of quality improvement (QI) is to improve experience and outcomes for patients at a…

A Difficult Start Around 40 years ago, at the age of 12, I began to get initial signs that my kidneys weren’t well.  Four years later at boarding school, my kidneys failed and 147 of the next 365 days were spent in hospital. As a nervous and unhappy child, this was a terrifying and utterly devastating experience. I quickly became overwhelmed and despite the often outstanding…