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Hemodialysis and peritoneal dialysis became important life saving measures other than kidney transplantation among patients suffering from chronic renal failure. But metabolic waste products accumulate in patients blood in spite of long term repetition of dialysis. During long period of repeated dialysis, the patient’s cooperation and understanding of the disease and of dialysis play a most important role, the patient’s cooperation and understanding can be brought about by proper information when given by medical personnel, mostly by nursing staff. For hemodialysis, arteriovenous shunt must be made surgically prior to dialysis. And for peritoneal dialysis, access to peritoneal space must be created surgically. Once access to blood vessel or to peritoneal space has been obtained, the procedure of dialysis, differs considerably. Also the complications after each procedure differs. It is presumed that content of the educational need of patient’s differs according to the type of dialysis. The present author carried out this study to find any differences in the content of educational need between patients who are having hemodialysis and who are having peritoneal dialysis. One hundred eligible patients who had one type of dialysis for more than 3 months were subjected to this study : 50 hemodialysis patient, 50 peritoneal dialysis patient. They were regularly followed up in the major hospitals of the Catholic university medical College. This study was started by collecting answers to 35 questions from the patients : 28 common questions, 7 specific questions for each hemodialysis and peritoneal dialysis patient respectively. The reliability of these questions were protested in a pilot study that included 40 patients : 20 hemodialysis patients, 20 peritoneal dialysis patients. And those questions were proven to be reliable for this study : Cronbach’s α was 0.94 for hemodialysis group and that of peritoneal dialysis patient was 0.92. All patients showed a high educational need in regard to every question. And there was no statistically significant difference between two groups. But the content of educational needs differed between two groups. While hemodialysis group showed an educational need for basic principles such as the reason of continuous medication in spite of dialysis, and of continuous hemodialysis, the peritoneal dialysis group were more interested in the practical aspect of dialysis such as complication of procedures and its management, management of site of tube insertion, and aseptic technique of handling tubes.
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