THE EFFECT OF GROUP DISCUSSION ON PARTNERSHIP WITH MEDICAL TEAM IN HEMODIALYSIS PATIENTS

To improve the quality of care provided to patients with chronic renal failure
undergoing hemodialysis, patients’ partnership with medical team is essential. Patients' involvement
approaches and generally, the patient-centered approaches are resulted in the increase of patient
satisfaction, costs reduction and results improvement. Due to the importance of partnership with medical
team in patients undergoing hemodialysis treatment, the current study aims to assess the effects of group
discussion on partnership with medical team in hemodialysis patient
Materials & Methods: In this study of quasi -experimental clinical trial (with two groups of
experimental and control) 60 patients with inclusion criteria through convenience sampling with random
allocation were arranged in two experimental and control groups. In the experimental group, the
educational intervention to promote partnership with medical team was made in 4 sessions by group
discussion. The control group received routine interventions. Data were collected through using standard
questionnaire before and 3 months after intervention. Data were analyzed via SPSS software version
18and with the use of chi-square tests, t-test, and Mann-Whitney nonparametric tests such as Wilcoxon
test.
Results: The results regarding to demographic and contextual characteristics showed that both
experimental and control groups were homogeneous in all variables before intervention (p>0.05) except
for (age,diagnosis age of renal failure and source of education acquisition about dialysis).The analyzed
results through using the Mann-Whitney test, and Wilcoxon test also showed that the mean scores of
partnership with the medical team after the implementation of group discussion between the
experimental and control groups were significantly different(p<0.001).
Conclusion: Group discussion was an effective teaching method to promote partnership with the
medical team in chronic hemodialysis patients. Therefore, group discussion to reinforce the partnership
with the medical team in patients undergoing hemodialysis is recommended by nurses.