Decision Support for the Renal Replacement Therapy With End-stage Renal Disease

Patients often need more comprehensive information and clearer communication in order to to understand the complications, risks, cost and impacts on life quality associated with different treatment options. The purpose of this study is to investigate the efficacy of a decision support intervention on reducing conflict and improving satisfaction in making the renal replacement therapy decision among patients with end-stage renal disease. This study will be a randomized controlled trail. They will be randomly assigned to the experimental or the control group. Participants in the experimental group will receive the decision support intervention provided by the patient educators through using a decision support tool. The control participants will receive the routine care. Independent t-tests will be used to analyze between-group differences in autonomy preference index, renal replacement therapy knowledge, decision self-efficacy, decision conflict, decision regret, and decision satisfaction at different data collection points.Generalized Estimating Equations will be used to analyze between group differences in the changes of renal replacement therapy knowledge, decision self-efficacy, and decision conflict across time.