The first in-person meeting of the 2026 UKKA Leadership Programme cohort took place this week in Birmingham, bringing together a highly diverse, multi-professional group from across the kidney community - including nurses, specialist registrars, consultants, pharmacists and psychologists.

Designed to develop confident, collaborative leaders, the programme is already bringing together individuals from across disciplines to share perspectives, build networks and prepare to lead change across services.

The face-to-face day focused on leadership through quality improvement, with sessions on leading QI projects, systems leadership and navigating difficult conversations in complex change environments. 

Participants highlighted both the practical focus of the day and the value of connecting in person. For many, the programme offers a structured way to build on existing experience and take the next step into leadership.

“I’m at a point in my career where having some leadership experience will definitely help, but also bringing all my past experiences of the things I have done to be able to quantify them and give them some quality and improve the way I’m doing things for the future of my career – I think a course like this will really help make me better as a person.” 
– Pooja Gudka, Renal Pharmacist

“I’ve always been very clinically driven as a nurse, that’s how I ended up in the advanced practice roles that I do, but as part of that, as a nurse, we have 4 pillars of practice, and leadership is one of those pillars. So it’s one of those aspects that I thought would be really good to develop my skills and understanding of leadership, and this was a good opportunity, certainly within nephrology, which is what I love.”
– Rachel Austin, Advanced Nurse Practitioner 

The programme now moves into its next phase, where participants will begin developing and delivering national-level projects focused on improving kidney care. Each participant is supported through dedicated mentor/mentee pairings, alongside input from UKKA Special Interest Groups, Professional Groups and Committees.

“I’m enjoying it so far, I mean we’re still early doing the leadership and change course at the moment, but I’m looking forward to when we start doing the project, on the ground, kicking off from July to the end of the year, doing something impactful. I’ve never had a formal leadership role, so this is a new experience for me. I’m finding the mentor/mentee pairing exceptionally helpful – it’s really insightful.”
– Dr Shady Behiri, Specialist Registrar

Over the coming months, the cohort will take these projects forward, gaining hands-on leadership experience while contributing to real improvements in services. Their work will culminate in presentations at national meetings, including UK Kidney Week, showcasing the impact of this new generation of multi-professional leaders.

The course is set up to run over three months or 12 months. The 12-month version is much more intensive. The participants have partnered with one of our special interest groups, committees or professional groups to actively work on a project and to co-develop that project with that group and lead on something within what the wider UK Kidney Association is doing.

So from idea to initiation, they plan out the project. They take all of the different leadership lenses, skills, change management and quality improvement methodologies that they learn and apply them to their project. Then the goal is by the end of the course, they have something that they're ready to start, and they have the networks and the support that they need to actually do it. - Dr Hillary Corwin, UKKA Education Project Manager