Health professional experiences of kidney transplantation in regional, rural, and remote Australia
Watters, Tara K., Glass, Beverley D., Scholes-Robertson, Nicole J., and Mallett, Andrew J. (2025) Health professional experiences of kidney transplantation in regional, rural, and remote Australia. BMC Nephrology, 26 (1). 88.
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Abstract
Background: Despite the demonstrated improved patient survival and financial benefits for health services with kidney transplantation compared to dialysis, populations outside of urban areas face inequities in access and a more difficult journey to kidney transplantation than their metropolitan counterparts. This study aimed to explore the experiences of Australian kidney transplant health professionals regarding kidney transplantation processes for patients residing in regional, rural, and remote areas, with a focus on improving access to and experiences of transplantation for this patient cohort. Methods: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with Australian kidney transplant health professionals. Transcripts were analysed thematically. Results: Interview participants (n = 26) consisted primarily of nephrologists from transplanting centres (15%), nephrologists from regional, rural, or remote non-transplanting centres (19%), clinical pharmacists (19%), and nursing staff (19%). Six main themes were identified regarding barriers to transplantation, including ineffective communication and education, overwhelming geographical burden, fighting for equal opportunities, paucity of social support, crushing financial peril, and deprived of adequate local care. Participants also made recommendations for new or modified service delivery models to address identified barriers, including coordination of work-up testing, outreach visits for transplant assessment, increased social and financial support, and increased and earlier provision of transplant education. Conclusions: Health professionals described patient-specific and system level barriers to kidney transplantation for regional, rural, and remote populations in Australia that could be addressed or improved by the modification of current processes or implementation of new service delivery models for provision of transplant care.
| Item ID: | 87726 |
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| Item Type: | Article (Research - C1) |
| ISSN: | 1471-2369 |
| Keywords: | Chronic kidney disease, Health equity, Indigenous health, Kidney failure, Kidney transplant, Rural and remote health |
| Copyright Information: | © The Author(s) 2025. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. |
| Date Deposited: | 02 Feb 2026 02:01 |
| FoR Codes: | 32 BIOMEDICAL AND CLINICAL SCIENCES > 3202 Clinical sciences > 320214 Nephrology and urology @ 100% |
| SEO Codes: | 20 HEALTH > 2002 Evaluation of health and support services > 200206 Health system performance (incl. effectiveness of programs) @ 100% |
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