My unit is anything but patient- centered. When we try to make decisions for our care we are treated like we are making a mortal sin. For those who do have patient-centerd units, tell us about them.

Pat: My unit has a large part of patient participation, though really this is more individual than global, mainly because we have those people who take active control of their health and those that rely on the care givers. For example: I do my own weight, temp and calcullations for the total fluid removal, I then program my own intregra and check the previous input (usually heparin parameters). Others have all the work done for them. Indeed my participation is encouraged but we have some who really are not reliable to do the programing or even weight themselves. Or in reality not able. Some of our people have visual and mobility impairments which limit some active hands on participation.
Hope this helps Nancy

I have dug out all the hand-outs I was given when I started at my dialysis center and there are quite a few pages. Give me a few days and I will get them uploaded onto my webpage and post the URL here. Ta for now... -C-

I am going to a different unit to learn slow nocturnal dialysis with my father. One thing I found interesting here was a program they implemented with their patients.

Each group of patients doing dialysis during a shift vote on a patient representative. They express their concerns to the representative it can be about useing the phone on dialysis. Having a coke machine. or education in treatment.

This representative meets once a month with the Nephrologist, Nurse, Social Worker and dietary personnel. At this meeting the patient representive brings up the concerns of the patients and the representative is given the information regarding that subject to take back to the patients.

They gave phone privledges to the patients because they requested it. They gave education classes on the issues the patients expressed they wanted information on.

I was very impressed with the units desire to learn from the patient as to what they think is required to make a good unit.

This unit also published it's own new letters to the patients telling them what is going on in the unit, what research is being done, what problems are being solved, what programs are being implemented.