Development and Validation of Kidney Replacement Therapy Knowledge (Know-KRT) Instrument.

What is it about?

The type of knowledge important for individual patients to be able to decide which dialysis best suits their lifestyle is important. Unfortunately, we don’t have well-accepted methods to assess patients’ awareness regarding kidney failure and kidney replacement therapy. _x000D_ We present a newly developed Know-KRT instrument consisting of three domains of knowledge important for dialysis decision-making, with acceptable internal consistency, reliability, and validity. _x000D_ Using Know-KRT we found that patients’ general kidney disease awareness is different and lower than their kidney replacement therapy or dialysis awareness. We also found that patients with advancing age, low health literacy, and suboptimal quality of kidney disease care can have lower awareness kidney replacement therapy, and may benefit from focused education efforts.

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