We’re keen to work with health professionals at NHS Blood & Transport (NHSBT) and renal healthcare clinicians in the field of living donation kidney transplantation. Gift of Living Donation provide advice and training on the best way to engage with Black patients and their families about living donation whether your organisation is providing community or acute care.
We can also attend events to talk about the best way to engage the Black African Caribbean community to improve equity of access to living donation and deliver better health outcomes.
We’ve produced a toolkit to help renal clinicians implement the phone buddy scheme at their transplant centre email Buddy@giftoflivingdonation.co.uk to see how we can help.
Simple and effective
Patient and public involvement work suggests that discussing living donor transplantation with a peer who understands both the experience as a kidney patient or living donor and as a member of the same community can help navigate the culturally specific difficulties of approaching the topic with family and friends.
The rates of pre-emptive living donor kidney transplantation for Black kidney patients have not increased at the same rate as for those of white ethnicities in the UK.
Kathryn Griffiths, King’s College London University
80% of patients wanted earlier engagement and
patients and family members, GSTT/gold, Final report of the living transplant initiative, nbta, 2020, p.32-36
support from peer volunteers from the same ethnic
background who had experience of living donation
to increase and boost their levels of confidence.
This holistic approach makes it easier to have the
conversation about living donation with their friends
and families.
Phone Buddy Scheme
Our targeted phone buddy scheme for Black patients helps people discuss living kidney transplantation as a renal replacement therapy (RRT) option for suitable patients. We developed a Quality Improvement Project (QIP) in collaboration with multidisciplinary clinical teams (MDT) across three kidney transplant centres and the London Kidney Network (LKN).
Find out more about the quality improvement work.