Date of Award

2021

Document Type

Project

College/School

College of Nursing

Degree Name

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP)

Project Mentor

Kumhee Ro

Readers

Jeanne Lowe

Abstract

Palliative care (PC) has become the need of the dialysis population to expedite emotional support, symptom management, and decision-making related to end-of-life situations (Sturgill & Bear, 2019). Under the spectrum of PC, advance care planning (ACP) is essential. The benefits of ACP conversations are largely confirmed in general healthcare (Rietjens et. al, 2017). Utilizing existing interprofessional dialysis teams to deliver the primary level of kidney PC is the most promising way to improve dialysis patients’ quality of life. (Lam et al., 2019; Pfeifer & Head, 2018). The purpose of this project is to provide ACP communication skills training for the interprofessional dialysis teams and evaluate its effectiveness and feasibility by assessing responses of pre-training, post-training, and one month after training. A total of 20 interprofessional dialysis team members answered the pre/post survey, and 14 of them responded to the follow-up survey. There was statistical significance in the increase of self-confidence in ACP communication skills after the training (t (19) = -6.750, p < 0.001) and the scores maintained after one month (t (13) = 1.028, p = 0.323). The study also identified increased awareness of the dialysis care team’s role in PC as well as positive findings of utilizing ACP communication skills.

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