The London Transplant Collaborative
The London Transplant Collaborative was built on the discussion that took place at the June BTS Transplant Summit in 2018 at which there was broad clinical support for the creation of regional transplant collaboratives to help address some of the current challenges units are facing around the country.
The intended aim of the London Transplant Collaborative is that it will provide an opportunity for transplant units to work together to address ongoing challenges around resilience, capacity and flex within organ transplantation. Together, it is anticipated that there will be more opportunity to both support transplant units and flag concerns, particularly in relation to challenges around peaks in activity, unpredictable workload, workforce sustainability and hospital capacity.
For more detailed information you can download the Transplant Collaborative organ sharing protocol.
Meetings
The first London Transplant Collaborative meeting was held on 28 November 2018. On 4 December 2019 a second meeting was held and outputs from the collaborative after 1 year include:
- A ‘Transplant Pan London Collaborative Organ Sharing Protocol’.
This protocol enables recipient centres who are offered a kidney for a named patient who are unable to transplant the kidney due to logistical reasons to contact another hospital within the Transplant Pan London Collaborative and ascertain if the patient can be transferred with the allocated kidney to a transplant centre.
The sharing group has the support of H&I labs and they have been involved in devising a patient transfer form to ensure safe transfer of patient details from the recipient centre to the transplant centre. - The sharing group has surveyed the workforce of the 6 hospital trusts and provisions for pre-transplant and post- transplant follow-up care. There is a plan to extend this survey across the UK and to look into provision for retrieval in addition to transplantation.
- There is high level support for the work of the collaborative including clinicians, operational managers and commissioners.
- Continued support from the NHS regional director for London.