May is Mental Health Awareness Month

Research consistently shows high rates of anxiety and depression among dialysis patients. Do you routinely refer patients who seem anxious or depressed to your clinic’s social worker? Medicare requires dialysis social workers to provide counseling to address patients’ psychosocial needs and requires dialysis clinics to have sufficient social work staff to meet their clinical needs. Tell your patients about these MEI mental health resources.

• Home Dialysis Central Facebook group

• Kidney School Module 5: Coping with Kidney Disease

• Life Options’ Just the Facts: Dealing with Depression

Kidney Views Blog Topics: Join us for our weekly home dialysis blog. Click here to subscribe to new post alerts. Tell us what YOU think—we welcome comments and guest blog posts!

• The New Medicare GLP-1 Bridge Program: Accessible, Affordable Weight Loss Meds
  05/14 – Beth Witten, MSW, LSCSW
• Loss of Alcavis® and ExSept Plus® Create Patient Confusion
  04/30 – Dori Schatell, MS, Executive Director, Medical Education Institute
• With Life on Dialysis, Figure out the Why and the How will get figured out by itself
  04/23 – Kamal Shah
• Helping Dialysis Patients Work: Home Dialysis Is Work-Friendly
  04/16 – Beth Witten, MSW, LSCSW

Home Dialysis in the News

• ESRD Treatment Choices Model After 4 Years: Did Not Move the Needle
• WVLT in Tennessee Shares Sports Announcer Rick Russo’s Story

Living Well with Home Treatments

• Elizabeth Chose Home HD for Freedom and Scheduling Flexibility
• Meet Katrina and Hear About Her First Day of PD Training
• Diary of a Kidney Warrior Podcast Cam Shares His Experience of Crashing into Dialysis
• Diary of a Kidney Warrior Podcast Cam Ran a Half Marathon 2 Days After He Started PD

Industry Updates

• Less Home Dialysis and Transplant in Pediatric Patients Transitioning to Adult Clinics
• Simon Davies Discusses the Role of PD in Expanding Dialysis Acess

Advocacy for Better Dialysis

• H.R. 8319 Introduced in the House in April

What's New in Home Dialysis Research

Each month, we gather recent research abstracts about home dialysis. Visit our Journal Watch to learn more:

• Factors Driving Thirst in PD Patients
• PD Comparable to HD for Patients with AKI
• Bacterial Biofilm on PD Catheters
• Patient Employment Rates in PD vs. In-center HD (IHD)
• Assessing Self-care Ability Prior to Dialysis Start Increases PD Use
• Integrated Home Dialysis Programs and Hospitalization Risk

Featured Link: FREE SPARK CE Course on Setting Patient Expectations for Home Dialysis

Use the code NKF2026 to obtain a free CE credit for our SPARK CE+mentoring course. Register before June 15 and take the 1-hour course at your leisure.