The path to kidney transplant can be overwhelming, filled with complex tests and appointments. To make this journey easier to navigate, a team at St. Paul’s Hospital—led by clinical nurse specialist Erin Waters and pharmacist Bita Bateni—is creating a patient-friendly educational video outlining the key steps of the pre-transplant evaluation process. With support from an ODTRF-funded Providence Health Care Research Challenge grant, their goal is to empower patients with the knowledge they need to feel more informed. The team also intends to evaluate how their video improves patient understanding and identifying any gaps in the information provided. We caught up with Erin to learn more about this important initiative.
Q: What challenges do patients typically face when navigating the pre-transplant evaluation?
A: The pre-transplant process can be long and complex. It involves the coordination of multiple lab tests, diagnostic testing and clinic appointments, both with the transplant team and other specialists. It can be difficult for patients to navigate all the steps and feel confident about their progress or where they stand in the listing process.
Q: What information does the educational video cover, and how was it developed?
A: The education video will help provide a simple overview of the main steps of the transplant process. It tries to lay out some basic information to help patients better understand the experience. It was developed through collaboration with transplant staff, including nursing, pharmacy, physician and allied health as well as with input from patient partners.
Q: How did you engage patient partners in this project?
A: We had a patient partner working with us on this project to help inform the early stages of the video. Our Research Challenge project is also aimed at more broadly assessing whether this video is helpful to patients and to gain feedback on whether there are things we need to improve.
Q: How do you envision this video being used in the long term to support transplant patients?
A: We hope this video will be used to help give patients a general overview of the process involved in being assessed and listed for a kidney transplant. Part of this Research Challenge project involves gathering information from patients about how and where they would get the most use out of this video. We are looking at different options for making this video accessible online (for example on the BC Transplant website), for emailing to patients at the time of their appointment notification, and/or providing patients time to view the video on an iPad when they are here for their clinic appointment.
Learn more about this research project by Erin and Bita.