A diagnosis of kidney failure can feel like a personal tsunami—sudden, overwhelming, and life-altering. Patients often face uncertainty about their health, independence, finances, and future, while experiencing multiple intense emotions such as fear, anxiety, anger, and grief. These emotional responses can significantly affect a patient’s ability to engage in care and adapt to treatment.
For dialysis professionals, understanding the emotional impact of kidney disease is essential to building therapeutic relationships and delivering person-centered care. Daily challenges—including fatigue, sensory changes, relationship strain, employment disruption, and body image concerns—shape patients’ emotional experiences and influence communication, trust, and treatment participation.
This course examines the emotional context of kidney disease and provides practical strategies to recognize distress, address anger and fear, and foster hope to support patient resilience and engagement.
Objectives
- Understand the impact of patients’ emotions on their ability to engage in their care.
- Explain why anxiety and fear are particularly challenging for patients.
- Describe methods to recognize and help patients address anger.
- Discuss strategies for instilling hope in patients.
Accreditation for this course expires October 31, 2026.
Learners must complete the entire activity, receive a score of at least 80% on the post-test, and complete the course evaluation to be awarded contact hours. Learners can print or save their completion certificates and should keep them for a minimimum of 4 years. It is the responsibility of the learner to determine if these CE contact hours will be accepted by a particular licensing organization.
- Nurse Planner – Steffanie Gissal, BSN, RN
- Authors – Jennifer Ravert, RN and Dori Schatell, MS
This class is part of our Self-guided Program to Advance Renal Knowledge (SPARK) series of online CE learning + professional mentoring education classes for nurses and dialysis technicians. Our goals are to help dialysis nurses and technicians stay up-to-date with their training and certifications—and to attract new interest in nephrology as a career. This activity was funded, in part, by an unrestricted educational grant from Fresenius Medical Care.
