Peritoneal Dialysis is in the spotlight. NHS Kidney Care produced the specification for PD describing the pathway of care from shared decision making through training to home or assisted dialysis last month. Following on from that piece of work the group have drawn up a national PD tender that will be published shortly in the European Journal. This tender will allow kidney services and networks to put patient friendly contracts in place by April 2010.
The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence has also just announced a scoping exercise for the development of a short clinical guideline on PD. Details can be found on the NICE website. This short guideline will complement and build upon the soon to be published RA best practice guideline and provide a sound basis for offering this modality as one of the options for people approaching the need for renal replacement therapy. One question I would like to hear the answer to is how we can support shared decision making for people who arrive requiring dialysis when preparation and planning haven’t been possible. Increasingly such individuals are being offered PD but accelerated processes for patient education and fast tracking of, for instance, transplant listing remain a challenge on busy renal wards.
