CAPO Raining Failures

Abstract

Thirty patients (5.5% of all patients who entered CAPD training in three Toronto Hospitals) failed CAPD training during the last five years. A categorization of these training failures revealed that in three patients (10%) were due to dialysis-related problems, and in 11 of them to concurrent medical problems ultimately contributing to training failure. Only in two of 30 (6.6%) failure was due primarily to inadequate intellectual ability.

In those situations where partners were responsible for carrying out the dialysis, the most common cause of failure was the inability of the partner to meet all of the other care needs beyond those of dialysis, mainly because the patients were very sick. Other reasons for spousal failure were fear of responsibility and outright spousal countermotivation.

Remaining categories of failure in patients were countermotivation (four or 13.3%), inability to adjust emotionally to life with CAPD (seven or 23.3%), physical impediments to carrying out CAPD (two or 6.6%) and severe psychiatric disturbance (one patient or 3.3%).