How is it to be a dialysis nurse?

KellyCCRN · Oct 5, 2008

I am new to acute dialysis ( about a month in). I can't speak for the outpatient clinics but I love inpatient acute dialysis. I have worked med/surg, CCU/ICU and EC and have to say I feel I have the most autonomy in dialysis. I work in a small unit with 6 bays and depending on the pt census we may have 2-12 pt's a day. We have no more than a 1:2 ratio so I feel I can actually care for and monitor my pts as I should. I feel that my background in ICU and med/surg have definitely helped out but I work with 2 nurses that have never worked in a specialty other than dialysis. As far as the pay goes I am making the same as I was when I was working in other specialties as in our hospital dialysis falls under critical care. In our unit we take call on average one day a week and are required a full weekend of call each month. Hope this is helpfull.

mpccrn, BSN, RN · Oct 5, 2008

i worked dialysis for 5 years, both acute and chronic and have an ICU background. our ratio was 4-5:1 and we did children and covered peritoneal dialysis patients as well. call was once a week and we did every other sat. the nice thing about dialysis was every sunday off as well as thanksgiving, christmas and new years. having sundays off meant mother's day and easter as well. that was nice. the chronic patients are "needy", expected me to make any appointments they needed in other departments. they ALL waned to be put on the machines FIRST, regardless of the fact that they all vanned in together and all went home together. we changed their doses of epogen and calcijex based on their labs and were required to write a monthly note on them. they had little understanding if their machines weren't ready for whatever reason. in all honesty, i worked hard for 15 minutes in the morning, getting everyone on and again for about a half hour at turnover, getting 4 off and 4 back on and not again until the final take off for another 15 minutes. it was more like a factory assembly line. i was an aggresive dialysis nurse...if they put it on, i tried like heck to take it off....not my fault they put on 5-6 kg between treatments. i didn't like coming in for patients that decided they were too busy that day to come in for their treatments and decided after hours was more convienent, meaning my day just turned into 15-16 hours. getting lines placed for accesses that clotted took an act of god, which again meant you'd be staying. the only real challenge to the job was learning the machine (that took about 2 weeks), dialysing critically ill patients in the icu/ccu, teaching the new patients, sticking the difficult accesses and helping the end stage patients come to grips with quitting dialysis. it's basically a no-brainer job. would i do it again? sure, if it fit my life requirements. :smokin:

nursingisok · Oct 5, 2008

I don't know what acute dialysis is like however I'm trying to get into that position but I can tell you what Chronic dialysis is like (clinic). It's HARD work...just like any other nursing field. I was always on my feet. And I was the charge nurse even though I was brand new to nursing in general. If you're an RN in the clinic they want you to be charge nurse usually. I always helped out my technicians and the patients are really needy. I kinda wish I had that ICU background now. I still work in the clinic setting but I'm looking for an ICU job or an acute dialysis nursing job. If dialysis is something you think you will like then go for it.

nurseofalltrades · Oct 5, 2008

I work in a dialysis unit in a prison....It has a lot more down time than my LTC job had. We have on average 30 inmates a day divided into two shifts.Honestly I would much rather be working in a hospital somewhere, but the job pays well and the schedule is good, so for now its not so bad.....