Aim:
To provide, education, training, learning resources and clinical recommendations for multi-disciplinary healthcare professionals working in kidney care to enable them to deliver safe, effective, person-centred care to adults and children with end stage kidney disease who require supportive care.
Chairs: Jyoti Baharani (Consultant Renal Medicine) & Helen Hurst (Renal Nurse Consultant)
Key outputs
- Qualitative analysis of patient and clinician understanding of supportive care and how it should be implanted in care
- SEISMIC survey, a three-country survey of kidney supportive care practice (UK, New Zealand and Australia)
- Paediatric palliative care formulary supplement - As part of The Association for Paediatric Palliative Medicine, this supplement to the APPM Formulary has been developed to provide additional support for the pharmacological management of children with CKD in a palliative care context.
The SIG has a unified structure operating through focused task and finish groups. This approach provides enhanced flexibility and enables members to contribute to specific projects based on their expertise and interests.
Current Projects
The UKKA Supportive Care Special Interest Group is leading a number of collaborative projects to strengthen the evidence base for supportive kidney care and improve outcomes for people living with kidney disease. Here's a snapshot of what we're currently working on.
- Symptom Management Guideline
Work is progressing across four symptom areas: pain, pruritus, fatigue and gastrointestinal symptoms, with the guideline expected to be published in late 2026/early 2027. - Measuring Outcomes in Supportive Kidney Care
The group is exploring new ways to measure outcomes in supportive kidney care, including the potential use of OpenSAFELY to access primary care data. This could help identify people with advanced kidney disease who are not receiving dialysis or known to renal services. Work is also being aligned with wider national data initiatives to support future implementation. - Patient, Carer and Professional Perspectives
A manuscript is currently being prepared following research exploring how supportive kidney care is understood by patients, carers and healthcare professionals. Initial findings were presented at UK Kidney Week 2026 and highlight the need for clearer communication about supportive care, more consistent terminology, and improved education to support shared understanding across patients, carers and professionals. - Frailty and Chronic Kidney Disease Guideline
Development of a Frailty and CKD guideline across four task and finish groups with umbrella review of the evidence – expected publication by end of 2026.
Share your research ideas
Are you interested in sharing your kidney supportive care or conservative kidney management research ideas for feedback?
The Supportive Care SIG's Data and Research Workstream is co-led by Prof Fliss Murtagh and Dr Barny Hole and meets online, alternating monthly. These meetings offer an opportunity to network with clinicians and researchers studying kidney supportive care. We typically have a presentation of a research idea or completed project and discuss the implications and potential for future development. Recently, we have looked at qualitative and quantitative studies examining dialysis discontinuation and prescribing in advanced CKD.
You may like to bring an idea or project to discuss, contribute to discussions, or just listen. All members of the research, PPI, and clinical teams are welcome - we want to ensure as broad representation as possible.
We can support any research idea development relating to kidney supportive care or conservative kidney management, as defined by Davison et al. 2024 DOI: 10.1016/j.kint.2023.10.001