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REACH stands for Renal Education and Choices at Home. These specialist nurses visit people who may need a kidney transplant in the future, in their own home, to provide support and information.

Ali Reed who is the REACH Transplant Programme Lead had reached out to the Include For Good Rapporteurs for some support to better understand the needs of patients with learning disabilities.

Rapporteurs Natalie Patterson and John Gallon pulled together information for the presentation and some resources to share with the nurses. Sandy offered to be the team member to deliver the presentation.

A key topic of conversation was around effective communication and different ways to make complicated information more accessible.

Sandy also spoke about how important it would be for people to hear from others who had already gone through a kidney transplant. He also stressed how important it would be to hear from both people who had had a successful transplant and from those who had not.

Finally Sandy explained why it would be important for people with learning disabilities to have the chance to visit the hospital before they went in for the transplant. The hospital visit should include

·      meeting the surgical team and learning what everybody’s job would be on the day

·      visiting the theatre and seeing the equipment int here

·      getting to know what all the different pieces of equipment you might be hooked up to are for and hearing what they sound like

·      visiting the recovery area, meeting the staff,and finding out what to expect when you wake up from the operation

·      doing the journey from the ward and visiting the different areas in the order it would happen on the day

Sandy is now looking forward to checking in a few months down the line to see what the REACH Nursing team have learned and gained from his presentation and hopefully build on the connection we have made with the team.

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