From Peritoneal Dialysis Education Guidelines to Clinical Practice

Peritoneal dialysis (PD) education, which has been shown to impact life quality and survival rates, is thus crucial to patients with end-stage renal disease. As medical workers in the PD field, it is our hope and obligation to lead every patient to achieve their individual self-care goals. Although the International Society of Peritoneal Dialysis (ISPD) published guidelines for peritoneal dialysis training in 2006 to help build a comprehensive educational program for better outcomes, how to implement related education programs has not yet been taken seriously by clinical health workers. In Taiwan, no articles introducing these guidelines and no report on the clinical implementation of these guidelines have been published. Thus, this article was written to describe the ISPD guidelines on PD education, including education content, space requirements, soft / hard equipment needs, training hours, and mode. Medical workers may use evaluation and periodical retraining to continuously monitor the self-care ability of patients. Aided by timely home visitations, learning outcomes and patient adaption may be followed comprehensively. Furthermore, to help patients under PD strengthen their capabilities of self-management and self-care, practical training suggestions based on the practice experience of our PD center are also included in this article as references for all medical workers in the PD field.