Quality Assurance in Dialysis (Developments in Nephrology)

The concept of quality assurance is increasingly recognized as an essential component in the delivery of medical care. It has come into particular focus in the area of kidney failure and its treatment by dialysis because the customer for this care truly enters into a lifetime relationship with his health care providers. The present handbook provides perspectives for those wishing to design and employ quality assurance principles and those of continuous quality improvement in the arena of end-stage kidney failure and its treatment, whether by dialysis or transplantation. Quality assurance principles are considered to be an inherent part of medical training and are commonly assumed to be utilized. The present work permits an interested reader to assess the validity of this assumption and, if found wanting, it provides the tools to introduce these principles as key components of staff training and practice conduct. Contributions in this book have been drawn from leading experts and, as such, represent a variety of perspectives, each with the focus of providing guidelines for introducing quality assurance into the medical care of patients with kidney failure.