Ethical Challenges Opposing Health Care Professionals Working at Artificial Kidney Units of Ain Shams University Hospitals and a Proposed Guide to Deal with Them

Abstract

reatment of end-stage kidney disease is a major economic challenge and a public health concern worldwide. Dialysis therapy poses several practical and ethical dilemmas of global relevance for patients, clinicians, and policy makers. These include how to: promote patients' best interests, increase access to dialysis while maintaining procedural and distributive justice, minimize the influence of financial incentives and competing interests and ensure quality of care in service delivery and access to non-dialytic supportive care when needed. These issues have received comparatively little attention, and there is scant ethical analysis and guidance available to decision makers. The present study is a descriptive cross-sectional study that was held on health care professionals (physicians and nurses) working at the artificial kidney units (El Demerdash and Ain Shams specialized University hospitals). Using PASS 11 Program for sample size calculation and assuming frequency of ethical challenges facing Health care professionals. Sample size of 100 Health care professionals can detect this frequency The healthcare givers (physicians and nurses) of dialysis units at Ain Shams University hospitals (ASU) were chosen because they represent a sample of health care providers working at the dialysis units in Egyptian hospitals. The participants understood the aim of this study and accepted to fulfill the proposed questionnaire. A self-designed questio