As the Holidays Approach, Remember the Dialysis Patients!

Often over the holiday time dialysis patients are admitted to the hospital, this can be due to fluid overload or problems connected to over eating. In my experience healthcare staff see dialysis patients as difficult, so my article is a brief look at how things can be hard for these patients during times of celebrations.

One of the benefits of working in Dialysis is that you get Thanksgiving, Christmas Day and New Years day off! Which is a wonderful thing for staff and patients alike. It means they can have normality for the holidays, spend it with their family, enjoy good food and relax.

Even if staff work the day before, normally it is reduced hours and can be a lot of fun. Patients tend to be looking forward to the holidays and talk about what they are going to do, who they are going to see and what they are going to eat!

Obviously this is a problem for patients on dialysis and they are inundated with information of what to eat and what they shouldn't eat over thanksgiving. How much to drink is a normal rule they have to follow, but as you can imagine people tend to get together and drinking is part of the ritual of holidays.

Part of our culture is to offer people food and drink, the majority of us get pleasure from feeding people good food, we also enjoy offering a wide variety of drinks, we often suggest if a renal patients wants to consume alcohol then they should stick to shots which are lower fluid consumption compared to beer, larger and cocktails.

The normal person does not always comprehend how much the renal patients diet is restricted, and even though they can let their hair down at Thanksgiving, they still need to observe their diet.

In the dialysis unit, we know our patients and we know who will break the rules.

Our patients are difficult because they have lost control of their life. They do not always comprehend that doing 12 hours a week of dialysis is keeping them alive. They do not comprehend that they need to follow a very strict diet. This is why when you advise some patients to use caution it is like a red rag to a bull!

I know this does not apply to all patients 360 days a year, but there is something about Thanksgiving and Christmas that brings out the wants and desires for food in all our patients.

Majority of patients will break the rules a little during the holiday, there are always the problem patients who have no STOP button so will take it to the excess. These are the patients you will often see in on your floor in the hospital

These patients will have probably missed dialysis because they are starting their holiday earlier or attended treatment but cut it by 30 mins or more.

I once knew a patient that went on vacation, didn't inform the dialysis staff and ended up in the ER because he thought he didn't have to do dialysis if he was at the beach!

Over the holidays, renal patient visits to the emergency room increase by a substantial amount. The holidays include July 4^th, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New year. In the dialysis units, we focus on education, how to prevent problems, decreasing the risk of complications from food which is not allowed, and how to manage fluid intake.

It is hard for renal patients in their normal everyday life to resist foods and to not drink to excess, so you can only imagine how hard it is for them during any kind of national holiday.

So when these patients are admitted to your floor, remember they are only human and they just wanted to enjoy themselves like everybody else.

Have a little patience and send them back to us as soon as you can.

Happy Thanksgiving everybody!