The American Society of Nephrology (ASN) and Home Dialysis University (HDU) launched a collaboration in 2023 to improve nephrology trainees’ knowledge, proficiency, and exposure to home dialysis therapies. Through the collaboration, ASN provided scholarships to 30 fellows to attend an in-person HDU fellows training course and participate in a virtual longitudinal case-based education series led by renowned experts in peritoneal and home haemodialysis. A recent press release notes that, after a successful first year, ASN and HDU will continue the scholarship programme this year, awarding 45 fellows the opportunity to participate.
According to data shared in the ASN press release, home dialysis has been associated with lower cost and equal or better clinical outcomes than facility-based dialysis. In 2021, only 14.1% of Medicare patients receiving dialysis underwent dialysis at home. Despite the higher incidence and prevalence of kidney diseases in Black and Hispanic people when compared to non-Hispanic White people, Black and Hispanic people with kidney diseases are even less likely to be treated with home dialysis.
“The ASN HDU scholarship programme, now in its second year, continues to affirm ASN’s commitment to improving access to home dialysis for all individuals with kidney diseases. Improving education and exposure to home dialysis among nephrology fellows will pave the way for a future kidney medicine workforce to ensure universal access to home dialysis and improve the care of people on dialysis,” said Deidra C Crews, ASN president.
Nephrology fellows have long cited a lack of education and exposure to home haemodialysis and peritoneal dialysis during training as a major educational gap, the ASN states. The ASN Task Force on the Future of Nephrology recommends providing additional education to close currently identified gaps in nephrology training, establishing individualised pathways to provide opportunities for fellows to explore advanced specialised care and other career goals in more depth, and prioritising diversity, equity, and inclusion as well as promoting healthcare justice in all aspects of nephrology, especially fellowship training.
“I was not comfortable with managing home dialysis patients the way I was with inpatient dialysis,” said 2023 scholarship programme participant Fatima Ayub, University of Arkansas (Fayetteville, USA) for medical sciences and central Arkansas veterans’ healthcare system. “The HDU scholarship programme has cleared up a lot of concepts for me and enabled me to be more confident while managing these patients. I am now routinely seeing these patients in our home therapy clinics, implementing all the knowledge I am receiving from our faculty at HDU.”
