The University of Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia has a kidney dialysis machine which can serve the functions of a healthy kidney for patients with kidney disease. Kidney disease occurs when the organ no longer functions and waste products begin to build up within the body. This disease can lead to anemia, high blood pressure, and nerve damage. In the process of kidney dialysis, there are catheters which are connected to veins through a vein graft which is attached to the tubes of the dialysis machine. In essence, blood is simply being pumped into the machine where waste products are filtered out. Then the ‘clean’ blood is pumped back into our body through a vein graft. There are ten possible candidates with chronic kidney disease who could potentially be granted access to the kidney dialysis machine. There are only two time slots, so the candidates will be assessed according to condition and other factors as to who is allowed to use the machine. I believe that Steve should be one of the two patients who is granted access to …show more content…
On the contrary, he has been sober for the past three years and wishes to do everything and anything necessary to fight the disease. Alcohol, while linked to, is not the only cause of chronic kidney disease amongst patients. In fact, the leading cause of death for all people with chronic kidney disease is actually heart disease. Heart disease is actually more common in people of African-American or Hispanic ethnicity, putting Steve, a caucasian male, at a lower risk for cardiovascular diseases. This being said, Steve would have better odds of surviving the duration of the disease, as he is less prone to risks of heart disease (“Race and Ethnicity”). If a patient is on the dialysis treatment but dies of heart disease, it is almost a waste of time in which another patient not at risk for heart disease could have been receiving
The second option to explore would be continuing the dialysis treatments. While considering this option with the family it is very important to stress the hardships that go along with the aggressive treatment. Making the family fully aware of the
Ms. Mancinho continues to strive for excellence and patient care improvements in her position as staff nurse in the hemodialysis unit. She is currently the primary nurse for five of our chronic dialysis patients. All of her primary patients exceed recommended adequacy guidelines and maintain patent, infection free arterial venous fistulas/grafts. While participating in monthly interdisciplinary care plan meetings, she makes suggestions that have led to positive outcomes such as: changes in dry weights, reviews of patients medications with the nephrologist to facilitate warranted medication adjustments as needed, referrals/close coordination with other disciplines such as podiatry and wound care to prevent infection/amputation in patients with advanced vascular disease, and endocrinology for educational purposes for well controlled blood sugars. She is able to quickly assess subtle changes in her patients to then notify the charge nurse and physician for appropriate guidance in facilitating positive patient care outcomes. Through her acute assessment skills she prevented an access from clotting. Prevention of clotting leads to extended longevity of the access. She applies the nursing process to systems or processes at the team/unit/work group level to improve Veteran care. She worked with flow in the new unit which led to better patient care and staff satisfaction. She developed the time out policy: a requirement for
Recruiting new employees is one of the biggest challenges health care organizations face today. The total population of RN's available for staffing is rising at the slowest pace of the last 20 years (Keller, Siela, Twibell, 2009). Healthcare facilities across the nation are struggling to meet the staffing requirements to stay afloat and provide adequate care to patients. The question in front of many organizations is how to stand out in a competitive workforce and recruit top hires.
A number of companies have entered the field of providing dialysis, where they compete with non-profit providers. This brings us to one of the most important strengths of RAI as a company: Its clients have rated it very highly as being able to blend the efficiency that they have come to expect of a company operating in a competitive market with the individual care and compassion of a non-profit health provider.
Overcoming alcoholism is not something that can be accomplished over night by simply gaining further knowledge regarding the disposition an alcoholic has put another person in. Alcoholics should be required to go through rehabilitation before and/or during the waiting process for a transplant. Their mistakes and sometimes inability to completely change should not make them any less of a human being with a right to life through
Medical History: A 57-year-old Caucasian male, with a history of end-stage renal disease, secondary to biopsy proven IgA nephropathy, history of liver cirrhosis secondary to alcohol abuse, hypertension, thrombocytopenia, leukopenia, who presented for evaluation for candidacy for a kidney transplant. The patient was evaluated at Tampa General Hospital. He went through a full medical work up. He was not listed due to lack of financial clearance per their center.
David Trujillo is a 29-year-old man who was born with renal dysplasia, which caused his kidneys to be too small to work correctly. He has needed four kidney transplants in his life, receiving the first when he was four years old. One kidney came from his father, his aunt, his uncle, and his brother. All four transplants have been successful, and without the transplants Trujillo would have to receive dialysis three times a week for four hours a day (Knoll, 2012). Trujillo’s family has been remarkably generous in donating their own kidneys to keep Trujillo alive. Others, however, are not as lucky as Trujillo.
The usual way was to log onto a computer (if not in use); look for the patient and quickly skim the patient’s history, resulting in wasted time. The result was a flow sheet that was easily accessible, located in front of the patient's bedside chart. The flow sheet included pertinent information from the patient’s last two hemodialysis treatments. We received positive feedback from the staff, and the flow sheet was adopted in the unit. After one year, the project was reviewed and continued to receive positive
“I have been as a registered nurse for 20 years. My full time job is in UT South western dialysis center as a registered nurse. Most of my patients have chronic and severe diseases. They need more attention and observation. I have another job in family clinic as a nurse practitioner. The majority patients in medical clinic are healthy and stable patients.” (C.L. September 10, 2016)
Available became controversial. While the question of the dialysis machine is still controversial, the health system was caught in another ethical dilemma regarding organ transplantation. Organ transplantation is closely linked to the issue of cleanliness because patients with kidney failure can get an organ transplant as an alternative to hemodialysis. The issue is complicated by the fact Medicare is financed by organ transplant, and there are those who believe that the distribution of rare transplant is not right. There are thousands of terminal patients whose lives can be saved by organ transplantation, but there are no formulas of work that can be used to determine which of the thousands of patients will be given priority. It is left to the discretion of medical officers to decide who is worth saving. The ability to keep someone alive by replacing one or more of their major organs is a splendid achievement of medicine of the 20th century.
The option that is most frequently used to treat the disease is dialysis. Dialysis takes a person blood and passes it through an artificial dialyzer which removes toxins and extra fluids from the patient’s blood. In addition to the “Core curriculum for the dialysis technician: a comprehensive review of hemodialysis” dialysis can be done in centers or at the patient’s own home, most of the time it’s done in centers three times a week for four hours.
Ms. Brantly has been a nurse for 20 years and currently works in a dialysis clinic. She is the administrator for the clinic, along with twelve other outlying clinics throughout New Mexico. The questions and responses that Ms. Brantly’s provided during her visit to class are listed.
X.X. has been a very easy going resident throughout the course of our encounter with letting me do whatever is needed to give him the care he needs. X.X. came to Bay County Medical Care Facility on January 30, 2013 due to right hip replacement surgery that he never really gained much mobility back in, along with recurring UTI’s from urinary retention. Besides the hip replacement and the UTI’s that he was admitted for he was previously diagnosed with type II diabetes mellitus, sleep apnea, and bipolar disorder. After 2 years of being admitted into Bay County Medical Facility, roughly in July of 2015, was diagnosed with stage II kidney disease, which lead to him developing anemia and hypertension (HTN). According to the American Diabetes Association, diabetes starts to cause damage to the renal system by exerting lots of extra stress on the filters of the kidneys. After many years of stress being put on the kidneys, red blood cells and proteins begin to leak through into the filtration system,
Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) is a disease that is described as a loss of kidney function gradually over time. As kidney function decreases, the waste collection in the body’s blood becomes high and makes the individual feel sick. This disease can lead to other complications in the body such as anemia, poor nutritional health, high blood pressure, and nerve damage. These complications will begin to progress and show as CKD progresses to advanced stages. Early detection of this disease is essential when it comes to treatment. If CKD is diagnosed early enough the disease progression can be slowed down and managed. This disease will eventually lead to failure of the kidneys
In Kidney failure cases urea, creatine, uric acids and electrolytes move from the blood to the dialysate with the net effect of lowering their concentration in the blood. RBC s WBC s and plasma proteins are too large to diffuse through the pores of the membrane. Hemodialysis patient are exposed to 120 to 130 L of water during each dialysis treatment. Small molecular weight substances can pass from the dialysate in to patient’s blood. So the purity of water used for dialysis is monitored and controlled.