Survey of the Attitude of Physicians towards Establishing and Maintaining a Peritoneal Dialysis Program

Abstract

In an attempt to evaluate the attitude of physicians towards establishing and maintaining a peritoneal dialysis (PD) program in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), we sent a questionnaire to 160 physicians; the heads of the 148 active dialysis centers in the KSA and 12 other consultants working in these centers. This covered decision makers in 109 centers (73.6%) in the Ministry of Health (MOH), 18 (12.2%) in Governmental-non-MOH centers, and 21 (14.2 %) in private hospitals that, together, care for a population of more than 7300 patients on chronic hemodialysis (HD) and 559 on PD. The study was performed between September and December 2005. A total of 145 of the 160 physicians (90.6%) from 141 dialysis centers (95.2%) answered the questionnaire. There were 81 respondents (56.3%) who believed that follow-up of the PD patients should be available in all the dialysis centers, 80 (55.2%) would like to have a PD clinic at their centers, and only 20 (13.8%) had PD clinics in their centers. However, 93 (66.4%) respondents did not request from the administration of their hospitals to open a PD clinic and 62 (44.6%) admitted to having no expertise in managing the patients on PD, while 53 (38.1%) claimed that they did not have enough space in their dialysis centers to start a PD program. Regarding training and expertise, 57 (40.7%), 58 (43.3%), 48 (35.6%) and 72 (52.9%) physicians had training in continuous ambulatory PD (CAPD), intermittent peritoneal dialysis (IPD), automated peritoneal dialysis (APD) or continuous cyclic peritoneal dialysis (CCPD), and acute PD, respectively. The comparisons between the health sectors in the KSA showed that MOH had significantly less active PD programs, and this reflected tremendously on the knowledge of the staff. Our survey indicates that the current practices concerning the PD programs in the KSA are modest, and that a new strategy is required to spread this modality of therapy horizontally in all the dialysis centers, and vertically by introducing the latest technologies in the field of PD, such as automated PD machines and connectology. There is also a need to increase the awareness of physicians about the benefits and applicability of PD. National guidelines and training are indispensable and cannot be overemphasized to improve this service, especially in the MOH hospitals.