Adaptation to chronic dialysis: a two-way street.

While dialysis is a medical advance that enables people to live who would otherwise die, it is often experienced as an ordeal by those who must live with it. Patients and staff experience difficulties in their adaption to chronic dialysis. A program that accepts all patients, regardless of motivation and stability, carries with it the responsibility of offering care in a way the patient can tolerate and of providing a regimen within the context of his personality structure and social adaptation.