Welcome to the Renal SpR Club

Supporting renal trainees in the UK and Ireland. The SpR Club organizes twice-yearly meetings with presentations from national and international speakers from around the speciality. It also represents trainee views to the UK Kidney Association executive committee.

Contact us on @rasprclub via Twitter!

Structure of SpR club

Opportunities for Trainees

The Francis Crick Institute Postdoctoral career development fellowships for clinicians

Our postdoctoral career development fellowships for clinicians provide funding for 1 year full-time or 2 years part-time postdoctoral research experience for clinicians in a Crick research group. Fellows with their own salary funded via NIHR, their universities or other external funding schemes may also apply to be hosted within a Crick research group.

The fellowships aim to:

• Foster long-term clinical links and collaborations.
• Provide clinicians with a postdoctoral extension of their research experience, and with scientific networking, training and career development opportunities.
• Provide a platform from which fellows may apply for external funding, e.g. clinician scientist fellowships, to be held at the Crick or elsewhere.

Fellows at the Crick will be embedded in a vibrant multidisciplinary research community of more than 1000 scientists carrying out research to improve our understanding of health and disease. They will benefit from an extensive seminar programme including Crick lectures, Interest Group seminars and Symposia, from clinical academic networking opportunities, and from comprehensive training and career development activities including technical training via our Science Technology Platforms, science communication and grant writing.

This opportunity would suit talented and motivated postdoctoral clinical fellows who are passionate about research and show outstanding potential for continuing a career in academic medicine. Applicants should have completed a medical degree, or equivalent clinical professional qualification, and a research PhD. Applications are welcome from all medical and surgical specialties.

Applications for Crick fully funded fellowships open in early spring. Applications from fellows with funding for their own salary support are welcome at any time.

More information is available here visit.

Social Media

Are you interested in a data analytics opportunity to learn how to analyze social media tweets? Please contact Tejas Desai on Twitter here.

International Society of Nephrology

Free ISN membership

ISN Reverse Fellowship programme

The NephWork

The NephWork is an SpR driven National SpR audit and research network supported by the UK Kidney Association and the Renal Registry. Its aim is to develop, coordinate and deliver simple audit and research projects that answer a specific and simple question on a large scale by coordinating the audit and research activity of a large number of renal trainees nationally..

National AKI audit

We have suspended the audit of AKI care in acute admitting trusts in England and Wales. We will be able to inform you when it will be possible to restart the project in the future.

The first audit project selected is an audit of AKI care in acute admitting trusts nationally, 10 years on from the original NCEPOD report. Data will be used to compare patterns of care across the UK to nationally agreed audit standards for the care of patients with AKI (recently published UKKA guidelines) in order to review care standards and patient outcomes identified through the Renal Registry Master Patient Index for AKI. The first audit will be for England and Wales only. It is hoped that future audits will also include the participation of units in Scotland.

SpR workforce contribution

All contributors to the NephWork project are listed on relevant webpages and authorship of all publications and presentations are published on behalf of the NephWork, so contributors are represented and can cite outputs as publications to which they have contributed. This is a great opportunity for trainees and trusts to be involved in this national audit, and we anticipate the results having a significant impact on the way services are developed and delivered moving forward with the opportunity to link to future research and quality improvement opportunities.

Open to recruitment

We currently have participating SpRs from a number of Acute Trusts - but are keen to enhance this workforce to achieve the best coverage possible.

Interested trainees should contact the NephWork team, at the Renal Registry.

How to register the audit at your NHS trust

Social Media in Nephrology

NephJC

NephJC is a nephrology journal club that uses Twitter to discuss the research, guidelines, and editorials that are driving nephrology. After the chat, the conversations are archived by Symplur and in Storify. You can also follow their posts on Pubmed.

NephJC takes place every two weeks on Tuesday at 9 pm Eastern time and on Wednesday at 8pm BST.

Glomcon teaching tool

These are video link sessions that have been set up through the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Centre and Harvard Medical School.

This teaching tool has four components:

1) A Pre-conference ‘Glomcon Trivia’ webinar: Tuesday at 12 pm.

• Hour-long sessions led on a rotating basis twice a month by participating Nephrology Programs
• Live audience response polling

2) Live web-based Glomcon Case Conferences, Wednesday at 6 pm

• Conferences include pathology slides review by a nephropathologist. Discussion is led by a volunteering nephrologist.

3) Web-based archive of de-identified case summaries from past conferences with pathology images

4) Discussion forum questions from the pre-conference webinar will be posted in an online quiz format for users who may have missed it earlier.

At this time, 13 programs across the country are participating in it. If you or your program would like to be a part of this endeavour, please email Nikhil Agrawal. If you would like to sign up for the Glomcon case conferences, please email conferences@glomcon.org.

Videos can be watched back on the website above or on the Facebook site.

SpR Club Meetings

Autumn 2022
Challenges in nephrology: answers to questions you can’t find in textbooks

Spring 2022 - Virtual
Transplantation

Autumn 2021 - Virtual
Clinical pathology

Spring 2021 - Virtual
Keeping Going Through the Pandemic

Spring 2020 - Cambridge
Drugs and the Kidney: Tubules, Transplants and Trials

Autumn 2019 – Oxford
From bench to bedside nephrology

Spring 2019 – Edinburgh
Updates in nephrology

Autumn 2018 – Leeds
Sex and the kidney

Spring 2018 – Leicester
Dialysis

Autumn 2017 – Belfast
Renal Transplantation

Spring 2017 – Birmingham
Rare Kidney Diseases

Useful links in Nephrology

See educational resources for links to blogs and guidelines.

Some highlights:

Renal Fellow Network – New nephrology teaching points posted on a near-daily basis.

AJKD Blog – Official blog of the American Journal of Kidney Diseases

GlomCon – The Glomerular Disease Study & Trial Consortium (GlomCon) is a new project with the goal to create enabling platforms for clinicians and scientists to exchange ideas, participate in online conferences, and collaborate on basic science and clinical research projects.

RenalMed – practical information and help for nephrologists, non-renal physicians, renal nurses and technicians.

Precious Bodily fluids – Fantastic educational resource from the irrepressible @kidney_boy, with a particular focus on electrolyte and acid-base balance.

NephJC – a nephrology journal club that uses Twitter to discuss the research, guidelines, and editorials that are driving nephrology.