This question is for hospitals who admit chronic PD patients. What is the policy at your facility regarding whether or not PD patients and/or their families can perform their own PD therapy while hospitalized; this is of course assuming that they are not to sick or otherwise impaired to do so?
Thank you
Good question–and I hope you get answers from folks who do PD. We do offer an article written for patients about what to do when they are in the hospital, and we suggest that patients and/or families do the PD exchanges, if possible, to avoid errors made by hospital staff who don’t know PD well enough to do it safely. You can find that article here: http://www.homedialysis.org/article/life_at_home/how_to_protect_yourself_in_the_hospital.
There are no reasons why you cannot perform your dialysis no matter what hosptial you are in. Some hosptials will have trained PD nurses… They can bring you your supplies… but if you are able, it is your right to hook yourself up and do your own exchanges. Let them look over your shoulder if you wish, but it is your right to do everything just as you do at home… They cannot deny you the right to dialyze…If they do, then they can get in some serious trouble.
I was once in a situation where I had to have surgery on my quadracepts and the hosptial that was doing the surgery did not have a PD unit let alone dialysis PD Nurse. This brought about a big uproar because they wanted there to be a PD nurse there while I was doing my treatments. This was nonsense since I had been doing PD for over 11 years prior to this event.
For the times that I would be unable to make my own connections due to the surgery/sedation…my mom was going to fill in and make all hookups etc… They gave us a big stink over this and wanted us to find another facility. We rose a big stink to them and fought for my rights and did end up having the knee surgery and everything worked out just fine…
rnrnxm - Do you have any specific questons? I’m sure I may be able to help you…
///MM