Dialysis Interview

Is your interview for chronics, or acutes?

If it is for chronics you will be spending your days in a chronic dialysis center monitoring dialysis techs who run treatments, doing some treatments of your own as needed, administering meds, and providing education to stable, chronic dialysis patients who come in from home. There will be times when the doctor rounds and you confer with him, and times when the patients become unstable and need to be transferred out to a hospital. The patients come three times a week for 3-4 hours at a time, so you will get to know them pretty well. You will have Sundays, because patients are normally either on a Monday-Wednesday-Friday or a Tuesday-Thursday-Saturday schedule. If your patients become ill on a Sunday they will be admitted to the hospital and the acutes staff will take care of them there.

If it is for acutes, you will be going to inpatient hospital facilities and administering dialysis to chronic and acute dialysis patients who are hospitalized, not always for renal issues, but still need their dialysis treatments. The patients are less stable and you will meet new patients on a regular basis, although you will come to recognize some of the "frequent fliers" ("Oh, Mrs. Z skipped two outpatient treatments again and was admitted with a K+ of 7.9 and major fluid overload", for example). You will have to take call, and you can and will be called on a holiday or in in the middle of the night if a patient is admitted who is in critical need of immediate dialysis.

Each type has its own rewards and problems, they're just different in some ways.

I meant to say you will have Sundays off in chronics.

Advice: Give yourself a break if you aren't proficient right away. Dialysis is unlike any other type of nursing and it takes time, patience, and a learning curve before you will feel comfortable. It's okay, that's why we get so many weeks and months of training before we are on our own. You will have days when you feel really dumb at first, and then you will start having days here and there where you know exactly what to do and your confidence soars. Be patient and give it time!

Do I like it? I do acutes and so far (after 2 1/2 months) I love it! I have been a nurse for many years, mostly on inpatient hospital units, and this is the first job where I can honestly say I don't mind going to work at all. In acutes every day is different, and I have learned a TON in just a few short months. The hours are very unpredictable, as in, you can go in thinking that you have one treatment and will be home by 3 PM and end up having add-ons and working until 10 PM, so you learn not to plan anything on the days that you work, but that's acutes. Chronics have a more stable schedule.