A new study, published in in Social Science and Medicine, explores patients’ lived experience of care following an Acute Kidney Injury (AKI) and healthcare professionals perspectives of the management of AKI and relational work in that context.

This first study exploring AKI through a ‘Lifeworld’ approach has found that patient understanding of AKI were subjective, usually relying on their personal experiences, reflecting feelings of worry and vulnerability.

Key findings:

• Patients often lacked clarity about AKI because information was poorly distributed, and its meaning was unclear to them.
• Timing of introducing kidney-related information, patient’s ability to absorb it, the different meanings and language used and the ability to contextualise that knowledge within patients’ wider health and social context, all affected how AKI was understood and followed-up.
• After hospital discharge, patients felt lost navigating multiple appointments, with AKI follow-up care being lost within other health priorities and co-morbidities.

Overall, the study highlighted insufficient resourcing in the relational work required to successfully integrate AKI and kidney health into people’s lived experience, both during acute hospital care and their subsequent aftercare.

Researchers suggest that intervention design for care following an AKI might take into account ‘Lifeworld’ approaches in developing interventions to overcome the challenges of patient understanding and healthcare interactions within AKI aftercare.

The study was funded by NIHR Health Services and Delivery Research Programme Award and supported by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Greater Manchester Patient Safety Research Collaboration (GM PSRC). 

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