Nationwide peritoneal dialysis nurse training in Thailand: 3-year experience.

Peritoneal dialysis (PD) center is not possible to operate if there is no availability of dedicated PD nurse. Generally, the nurse has to play many roles, including educator coordinator, and sometimes leader. As professionalism, the PD nurses need to have both theoretical and practical skills. With the tremendous leap of PD population after the launch of "PD First" policy in Thailand, the shortage of skillful PD nurse is concerned. Hence, the nationwide PD nurse training course was established with the collaborations of many organizations and institutes. Until now, 3 generations of 225 PD nurses are the productions of the course. This number represents 80 percent of PD nurses distributed throughout the whole nation. The survey operated in the year 2010 demonstrated that the output of the course was acceptable in terms of quality since most of the trained PD nurses had a confidence in taking care of PD patients. The quality of patient care is good as indicated by KPIs.