Early evaluation of a newly commenced paediatric nephrology service in the Northern Territory of Australia: A carer's and provider's perspective

Health-care consumer views on the quality of subspecialist paediatric services in under-resourced regional Australia are poorly understood. We aimed to use the ‘paediatric nephrology service carer and health provider survey’ to inform clinical practice in a high burden, limited resource setting. The Northern Territory (NT) has extremely high rates of kidney disease, yet had no paediatric nephrology service prior to March 2017. Paediatric patients with kidney disease were usually managed by NT general paediatricians with advice from inter-state nephrologists. A part-time paediatric nephrology service covering weekly ambulatory care clinics, collaborative clinics with visiting inter-state urologists, inpatient consultations, and kidney biopsies was introduced in the Royal Darwin Hospital, Darwin in 2017.

Health-care providers and carers of children were invited to provide feedback, online or on paper as per their convenience, about paediatric renal services from March 2018 till June 2019 after Ethics approval from the institutional Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC 2018-3053). The nine-question survey, estimated at 3 min to complete, was designed to assess three areas: (i) general demographics; (ii) service accessibility; and (iii) service quality...