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On World Kidney Day we find out what patients think of their kidney care

Fiona Loud from Kidney Care UK explains what PREM stands for and how it has impacted care in the UK.

Kidney Care UK and the Renal Association have worked together for the past four years to produce the Kidney Patient Reported Experience Measures (PREM). The PREM 2019 is an annual survey of UK kidney patients that aims to: show where improvement can be made from a patient perspective, provide a national picture of people’s experience of care and help renal teams understand how patients feel about their experience.

Participation and coverage has continued to grow year-on-year and in 2019 nearly 16,500 responses were received from 70 centres and 297 adult unit across the UK. The 2019 PREM report has been released recently.

Using patients’ own expertise and knowledge of their health is a great way to achieve real, person-centred care. To support that we have also produced a leaflet for patients which raises awareness and understanding of the survey. Furthermore, we have developed a resource pack for hospitals, which includes a website which gives local insight into the results of the survey.  As NICE guidance consistently recommends shared decision making as best practice we are encouraging all kidney units to work with their local patient groups to see what can be learnt or acted on locally.

Encouragingly, most patients continue to rate highly their overall experience of care and the areas that scored highest centred on access to their renal team, privacy and dignity, patient information and scheduling, and planning. However, when it comes to specific aspects of care, needling for dialysis, patient transport and shared decision making continued to be rated lowest and remain unchanged over the past few years.

This means that improving patient experience remains a priority. A great example of this is the kidney unit at Kings College Hospital, which turned around its transport system by working with patients and transport providers.

The PREM is giving the renal units across the UK tools to learn from and evaluate what they do. By looking at local experience and working with patients and their families every renal unit could make a positive and beneficial impact to improving kidney care.

Visit the World Kidney Day 2020 website.

 

Channel website: https://www.nice.org.uk/

Original article link: https://www.nice.org.uk/news/blog/on-world-kidney-day-we-find-our-what-patients-think-of-their-kidney-care

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