Level of Nutrition Knowledge, Diet Practice and Education Demands in Dialysis Patients with Chronic Renal Failure

Kim, Soomin; Lim, Hyunsook

Abstract

The number of patients is increasing and their mean age is also increasing. Proper dietary adjustments are necessary to prevent protein-calorie malnutrition or complications but it is difficult for dialysis patients to adapt to diet therapy due to stress or anorexia. Education does not consider the individual characteristics, knowledge, dietary inhabit education demands, and initial education. The purpose of this study was to identify dialysis patient's nutrition knowledge and, dietary practice and compare those with nutrition education or counseling demands for providing basic data of desirable nutrition management. The data were collected by a survey consisting of the general characteristics, disease related characteristics, nutrition education and counsel characteristics, level of nutrition knowledge, diet therapy, and nutrition education and counsel demands from the 28th March to 22th July 2017. The total number of subjects were 33 patients among dialysis patients at two tertiary medical institutions and an artificial kidney room at a private hospital in Incheon·Gyeonggi. The data collected were analyzed statistically using the SPSS program 23.0, followed by further analyses using frequency analysis, one-way ANOVA, cross analysis, and correlation analysis. The results of the dialysis patients showed that younger (P < 0.05), female (P < 0.05), abnormal high school diploma (P < 0.001) groups had high nutrition scores. In addition, dietary practice and nutrition education and counsel demands showed a positive correlation (P < 0.05, P < 0.01). In particular, females were higher than males in nutrition knowledge, dietary practice, nutrition education, and counseling demand scores.