The Job Of A Hemodialysis Nurse

Such patients who have zero or very little kidney function are said to have end stage renal disease and would die without dialysis. Many patients on dialysis must report to a dialysis center or a dialysis unit in a hospital to receive dialysis three times a week. Patients who miss one or more dialysis treatments may be at risk for cardiac death due to the accumulation of byproducts in their blood that would normally be excreted by their kidneys as urine.

Dialysis is an artificial means of performing the work of the kidneys whereby a patient's blood is circulated through a dialysis machine which can remove a large amount of toxins and byproducts from the blood much as a real human kidney does on a daily and continuous basis. Because a large amount of blood is removed from the patient and recirculated back to the patient during dialysis, a dialysis nurse must vigilantly track the vital signs of patients undergoing dialysis. A dangerous complication of dialysis is hypotension, which if untreated, can easily lead to patient death.

Equally important, a dialysis nurse must also monitor the mental functioning of a patient who is undergoing dialysis. A change in mental status or a loss of consciousness may indicate that the patient is suffering from a dangerous change in their blood composition due to the dialysis treatment. Such a change may require a cessation of treatment and the immediate notification of the nephrologist, or kidney doctor, who oversees the dialysis unit.

Because the care of dialysis patients is complex and critical, Hemodialysis nurses often dedicate themselves to caring for only patients in the dialysis unit. A typical dialysis unit may be able to accommodate 8 or more patients undergoing dialysis at the same time. Therefore, a dialysis nurse must budget their time efficiently to be able to keep track of changes in a large number of patients.

Dialysis nurses must also be able to educate dialysis patients about how to take care of themselves before and after dialysis, and also give them important information about what types of foods may be dangerous for them to consume in large amounts. In general, patients on dialysis are prone to develop hyperkalemia due to consuming foods high in potassium. The potassium would normally be excreted by their kidneys in the form of urine, but in the dialysis patient this potassium may accumulate in the blood to unsafe levels which often leads to cardiac arrest and death.

By: Lisa Simmons

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