THE GROWING REACH OF RENAL RESEARCH

A small team of renal research nurses are having a big impact in Dorset. We spoke to Barbara and Laura to explore the work they’ve been doing and how they’ve been helping renal research to grow by supporting Renal Research Fellows from Southampton.

INTERVIEWEES:

BARBARA WINTERGOODWIN, Senior Research Nurse, Dorset County Hospital NHS Foundation Trust (DCHFT)

LAURA BOUGH, Senior Research Nurse, DCHFT

Renal Research At Dorset County Hospital

BARBARA: I started as an Intensive Care Nurse and then worked as a Clinical Site Manager. I moved to renal research in 2012 where I’ve worked ever since. I’ve been lucky to have worked with really engaged Principal Investigators (PIs) while I’ve been doing renal research which has helped me to enjoy it even more. I think in the whole time I’ve been here, there has been only one study that the PIs have declined.

LAURA: I’ve been here since 2014, before this I did chemotherapy and was a Dialysis Nurse, so my background is renal. I went into haematology when I joined research and have now come back to renal. It’s lovely to work with Dr Taylor and Dr Hateboer, our consultants. Dr Taylor in particular has championed renal research. She is an excellent consultant, the whole team is brilliant.

It’s a very supportive and trusting environment, our PIs are really engaged with what we do.

BARBARA: Having studies here also gives the patients continuity – they see us whenever they come in and we can pick up other things if something isn't right.

LAURA: A patient might have a problem that has nothing to do with the study.

If this is the case, we can recognise when things aren’t right and refer them if necessary. Sometimes, we’ve been able to get other problems diagnosed or help the patient to get additional support. That happened during an observational study for polycystic kidney disease which was a five-year study. You develop good relationships with the patients and there are so many other little things that can be picked up just through having that contact with a research nurse.

A Collaborative Approach

BARBARA: We’ve worked with the University of Oxford a lot, and we’ve recently worked on the EMPA-KIDNEY trial testing whether taking a single pill of Empagliflozin every day slowed the progression of kidney disease. It was a long trial, about four years, but the Oxford team are amazing to work with. Their training on trials is very thorough and they keep you up-to-date with developments and emerging results. They respond really quickly if we have questions, and they try to make it as easy for the researchers and patients as possible.

LAURA: They gave us the chance to work with pre-screening on some trials which was new to us and helped hugely with the recruitment because we had a list of hundreds of patients we could approach as soon as the trial launched.

BARBARA: Their trial design is excellent and they try to factor in everyone’s needs and make them work for patients, doctors, PIs and trial staff.

LAURA: We were one of the first sites to set up for EMPA-KIDNEY back in 2019.

BARBARA: We consented 45 participants into that trial and our target was less than that, so we did really well to over-recruit given we are such a small team.

LAURA: Having worked with the team at Oxford before, we already had a relationship with them when COVID-19 hit. This helped us hugely when it came to the RECOVERY trial which involved different treatments for COVID-19. It was great to be working across different teams and working together in different ways but because we knew the people at the top of the trial and we were using systems that we were familiar with, we were one of the first sites in the UK to be set up despite us being quite small. At one point we had really high recruitment in proportion to our population.

BARBARA: RECOVERY was so rewarding, seeing the results come through so quickly and the changes it made. We didn’t really work alongside other colleagues in different departments before that, so we got to know our colleagues better and experience different trials in different areas of the hospital.

Growing Renal Research

BARBARA: Part of our work now is supporting Renal Research Fellows. Tom Phillips from University Hospital Southampton was one of the first research fellows we had worked with – we were a little apprehensive because we weren’t sure how it would work but it’s been great. We worked on a trial called Protect V, where we needed a doctor to consent the patients to the trial and were lucky that Tom was able to do this.

Now we have Keegan Lee, who comes once a month from Southampton and is new to research. We’ve been showing him how to access our systems so that he can screen participants, consent and randomise. He’s applied to be an

Associate PI on a study which is great for the region and the speciality; seeing renal research growing is very rewarding.

LAURA: Both of our renal fellows have been based in Southampton, where there isn’t a hemodialysis service, so it’s nice for them to come here and to see renal research happening in an active environment.

BARBARA: Knowing that our work will eventually benefit patients fantastic.

LAURA: Within our team, Sarah Horton is our Research Project Manager. She carries out all of our data management, supporting the team and keeping everything on track.

That involves handling all the amendments and trial set-up, liaising between trial units, us and our Research and Development (R&D) department.

BARBARA: Sarah’s knowledge is amazing and it’s so important to helping the studies run smoothly, we wouldn’t be able to grow without that support.

If you’d like to find out more about what the Renal Research Team at Dorset County Hospital are involved in, you can visit their Twitter page: twitter.com/dchft_research

USEFUL LINKS:

EMPA-KIDNEY study: https://www.empakidney.org

RECOVERY trial: https://www.recoverytrial.net

PROTECT-V: https://www.camcovidtrials.net/trials/protect.htm