Palliative care needs of patients living with end-stage kidney disease not treated with renal replacement therapy: An exploratory qualitative study from Blantyre, Malawi

African Journal of Primary Health Care & Family Medicine

 
 
Field Value
 
Title Palliative care needs of patients living with end-stage kidney disease not treated with renal replacement therapy: An exploratory qualitative study from Blantyre, Malawi
 
Creator Bates, Maya J. Chitani, Alex Dreyer, Gavin
 
Subject family medicine; palliative care palliative care; end stage kidney disease; Malawi
Description Background: The burden of end-stage kidney disease (ESKD) in sub-Saharan Africa is increasing rapidly but the palliative care needs of patients living with ESKD are not well described. Resource limitations at both health system and patient level act as major barriers to patients receiving renal replacement therapy (RRT) in the form of dialysis. We undertook an exploratory qualitative study to describe the palliative care needs of patients with ESKD who were not receiving RRT, at a government teaching hospital in Blantyre, Malawi.Methods: A qualitative, explorative and descriptive design was used. Study participants were adults aged 18 years with an estimated glomerular filtration rate 15 ml/min on two separate occasions, three months apart, who either chose not to have or were not deemed suitable for RRT. Data were collected by means of semi-structured interviews.Results: In October and November 2013, interviews were conducted with 10 adults (7 women with median age of 60.5 years). All were hypertensive and four were on treatment for HIV. Four themes emerged from the data: changes in functional status because of physical symptoms, financial challenges impacting hospital care, loss of role within the family and the importance of spiritual and cultural beliefs.Conclusion: This study reports on four thematic areas which warrant further quantitative and qualitative studies both in Malawi and other low-resource settings, where a growing number of patients with ESKD unable to access RRT will require palliative care in the coming years.
 
Publisher AOSIS
 
Contributor MEPI, DfiD, EMMS
Date 2017-05-29
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion — qualitative research
Format text/html application/epub+zip text/xml application/pdf
Identifier 10.4102/phcfm.v9i1.1376
 
Source African Journal of Primary Health Care & Family Medicine; Vol 9, No 1 (2017); 6 pages 2071-2936 2071-2928
 
Language eng
 
Relation
The following web links (URLs) may trigger a file download or direct you to an alternative webpage to gain access to a publication file format of the published article:

https://phcfm.org/index.php/phcfm/article/view/1376/2049 https://phcfm.org/index.php/phcfm/article/view/1376/2048 https://phcfm.org/index.php/phcfm/article/view/1376/2050 https://phcfm.org/index.php/phcfm/article/view/1376/2033
 
Coverage Africa 2013 adults; male and female; Malawian; end stage kidney disease
Rights Copyright (c) 2017 Maya J. Bates, Alex Chitani, Gavin Dreyer https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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