Kidney Transplant Education outside the Transplant Center – Initial Experience with an On-Line Transplant Education Hub
1Division of Nephrology and Multi-Organ Transplant Program, Toronto, ON, Canada, 2Division of Nephrology, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, 3Division of Nephrology, Western University, London, ON, Canada, 4Centre for Mental Health, University Health Network, Toronto, ON, Canada
Meeting: 2019 American Transplant Congress
Abstract number: C125
Keywords: Patient education, Psychosocial, Resource utilization
Session Information
Session Name: Poster Session C: Kidney Psychosocial
Session Type: Poster Session
Date: Monday, June 3, 2019
Session Time: 6:00pm-7:00pm
Presentation Time: 6:00pm-7:00pm
Location: Hall C & D
*Purpose: Limited knowledge about kidney transplant (KT) is a potential barrier that may prevent patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) from pursuing KT. Dialysis and clinic staff may also lack sufficient transplant related knowledge, and this may prevent them to have meaningful discussion with their patients about KT. To promote transplant education in CKD programs in Ontario we made the full content of the Explore Transplant Ontario (ETO) available on-line (etontario.org) for patients and frontline nephrology staff. We also started a webinar series to inform staff about KT, utilizing the same website. Here we report our initial experience with this online resource in the first year of this initiative.
*Methods: The ET package consists of four education videos and accompanying information brochures. The videos include personal testimonials from KT recipients and donors and factual information about KT from professionals. A working group of patient representatives, nephrologists, transplant coordinators and dialysis nurses adapted ET for use in Ontario. ETO has been made available for patients and staff in 13of Ontario’s 27 regional CKD programs as part of a multicomponent quality-improvement initiative, coordinated by the Ontario Renal Network and the Trillium Gift of Life Network (the remaining 14 CKD programs will join in 2020). In addition to receiving physical packages, CKD programs received password protected access to the website, enabling us to monitor the usage, and to differentiate between patient and professional users.
*Results: The initiative has been launched in October 2017. During the first year more than 3500 ETO packages were distributed. We detected more than 700 patient and 640 healthcare provider access to the ETO website. In addition, more than 270 professionals attended the staff webinars real time, or accessed the archived content. There was substantial variability in the usage between CKD programs, that was only partially explained by the program size. Furthermore, at some programs professionals, at other programs patients were the predominant users. The cumulative usage has been steadily growing for patients. The usage by professionals increased sharply after the launch of the webinar series. Initial anecdotal feedback from patients and professionals indicated that the website was useful in attaining information about KT.
*Conclusions: The ETO website has been well utilized both by patients and by CKD professionals. We continue monitoring website use and we will analyze the potential association between website use and practice change and access to KT for patients in the CKD programs.
To cite this abstract in AMA style:
Belenko D, Richardson C, Li A, Edwards N, Lam J, Waterman AD, Garg A, Novak M, Mucsi I. Kidney Transplant Education outside the Transplant Center – Initial Experience with an On-Line Transplant Education Hub [abstract]. Am J Transplant. 2019; 19 (suppl 3). https://atcmeetingabstracts.com/abstract/kidney-transplant-education-outside-the-transplant-center-initial-experience-with-an-on-line-transplant-education-hub/. Accessed May 12, 2025.« Back to 2019 American Transplant Congress