Enabling self-management: selecting patients for home dialysis?

Pre-emptive living donor transplantation should always be promoted as the first-line treatment for kidney failure. Where that is not possible, patients must receive timely information and advice regarding all dialysis options available, including home-based peritoneal dialysis and haemodialysis. Where a dialysis unit enables and actively encourages self-management, patients will tend to select themselves, and if well motivated may overcome significant difficulties to exceed the expectations or predictions of dialysis staff. Patients then become advocates themselves and can provide other patients with the necessary motivation to consider a home treatment, such that they approach staff, rather than vice versa. For staff to be able to talk to patients with confidence requires direct experience of home dialysis, but in units which do not have a full range of home therapies, this may initially be difficult. Visiting patients in their home environment is an essential part of training for both medical and nursing staff. Before a patient is able to begin to engage in discussion about any dialysis therapy, they must have reached a point of acceptance that dialysis is necessary. If they are not at this point, then any attempt at ‘education’ will be largely futile. Once a patient has arrived at the point of choosing a home therapy, the pathway to their first dialysis at home must be as smooth and problem-free as possible.