Pushing Hard For Home Dialysis

While the standard procedure has proved to be more than adequate

, there has been a push in recent years to move dialysis into the home environment whenever possible. The thinking behind this move is that home dialysis offers patients lower costs, better quality of life and quicker recovery times. It also offers a new kind of dialysis job for people who want to work in the medical field but are not necessarily keen on working at a hospital.

As a means of increasing awareness of home dialysis, a group of experts recently met in Washington, DC for the first annual National Summit on Home Dialysis Policy. Among other things, the group discussed the possible reasons why home dialysis is only used among roughly 10 percent of all dialysis patients despite its promising results. Currently there are almost 400,000 patients receiving their dialysis treatments in hospitals or outpatient clinics.

The Hospital and Clinic Setting

Under the current model, the typical dialysis patient will visit a hospital or outpatient clinic to receive treatment three to five days per week. The facility will be staffed by a registered nurse or two, maybe some LPNs and an army of dialysis technicians all working together. Unfortunately, the clinical setting does not sit well with many dialysis patients, especially since they must endure a process that can take up to four hours to complete.

Moving dialysis to the home would keep patients in more comfortable surroundings and enable them to do other things while they're hooked up to the dialysis machine. Just this one factor alone could be the primary reason why home dialysis seems to be so much more effective. In addition, however, the nurse or technician working in the home environment may find the dialysis job more appealing because it is more personal rather than clinical. There seems to be very few downsides to making the transition.

Dialysis Clinics Growing

If the experts who met at the National Summit hope to return to 1970s levels of home dialysis, they are up against a growing industry of private, independently-owned dialysis clinics. These clinics are quickly emerging across the country, providing patients with more options and dialysis workers with more jobs. It's hard to imagine that any of them would join the push for home dialysis unless they could gain some sort of vested interest in it. We'll have to wait and see.

Regardless of the future of home dialysis, the industry is wide open for individuals who would like a dialysis job either as a technician for a nurse. Technicians can be certified quickly and easily through local programs while nurses must undergo a degree program and pass a licensing exam. For more information, you can check out a dialysis program at your local community college, nursing school, hospital or outpatient clinic.

by: Stephanie Miller

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