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Patients on peritoneal dialysis (PD) face many challenges when traveling, but these challenges can be minimized by pre-travel education, organisation, and planning. PD nurses play an important role in helping patients on peritoneal dialysis understand that travel can continue to be a part of their lives and in helping them prepare for, plan, and organize their travel experiences.
Travel gives us joy, expands our lives and affords us much-needed relief from our everyday activities. For our patients on peritoneal dialysis (PD), however, travel can be a reality check. Not only do the patients have to make normal travel arrangements, they face additional challenges both before and during their travel. Patients on PD are responsible for arranging delivery dialysis supplies and equipment transported to their travel destination(s). They are accountable for maintaining their prescribed dialysis regimen in a safe and timely manner while traveling via car, bus, train, plane or boat. Lastly, if they require emergency medical care, they must put themselves in the hands of unfamiliar personnel who may have little or no knowledge of how to care for a person on PD.
As PD nurses, we have an obligation to ensure that travel for our patients is as easy, safe and troublefree as possible. To achieve this, our nursing interventions should focus on: (a) providing patients with the knowledge they need to incorporate traveling into their lifestyles; (b) facilitating informed, timely, and organized travel planning by the patients and their PD nephrology teams; (c) maintaining the continuity and integrity of PD therapy during travel, while at the same time incorporating aspects of critical thinking and flexibility; and (d) safeguarding the patient's physical and mental health and well-being.
Several excellent articles are available that offer advice to PD patients who wish to travel. Accessing these articles, however, requires acquiring and copying several publications printed over the last 8-10 years. Our aim in writing this travel article is to consolidate current knowledge about PD travel into practical tools that can be easily modified to complement facility-specific policies and procedures. It is our hope that the organizational and educational tools included in the PD Travel "Toolbox" will assist you in encouraging your patients to travel. The components of the "Toolbox" are described below.
Components of the...