A nurse or attendant for a dialysis patient, matched to the dialysis week.

Most likely an attendant, with a nurse on specific days. If your father walks, eats, takes his tablets and has a working fistula, the work between sessions is the fluid chart, the renal meals, the daily weight, the escort and the hours after dialysis when his blood pressure is low. That is attendant work. A nurse comes in for the erythropoietin injection, or full time if he has a dialysis catheter, a new fistula, insulin with a foot wound, or has just had a transplant. We ask these questions on the free assessment call and tell you which one fits.

A nurse visit for an injection or a dressing can usually be booked for the next day. Nurse shifts, whether a daily 12-hour shift or 24-hour cover, need 48 hours’ notice so we can match renal experience and language. Attendant placements take three to seven days because the attendant will live with or spend every day with the patient, and a poor match costs more time than the wait. If the patient is being discharged tomorrow, a nurse visit the next day plus the family covering the first nights is the realistic plan.

On a dialysis day the nurse weighs the patient and checks blood pressure before leaving, escorts them to the centre, and at home afterwards checks the access site, blood pressure and how the patient feels, keeps them resting, and gives the evening medicines. On a non-dialysis day the work is the morning weight and blood pressure, the fluid count through the day, medicines with the phosphate binders at meals, any injection or dressing that is due, a short walk, and the log. The pattern repeats, which is why the rota is built around the dialysis days.

Through the family, with the handover log. The nurse does not call the nephrologist directly unless the family has arranged it. Each day’s weight, blood pressure, fluid intake, medicines, injections and any symptom go into one chart that the family keeps and takes to the dialysis unit and the clinic. When something changes, the nurse tells the family the same day and they contact the unit. For an emergency the nurse calls 108 first and the family second.

Run or adjust a dialysis machine, change a prescription, fluid limit or diet, insert a PD catheter, or cannulate a fistula outside a dialysis unit’s own home haemodialysis programme. EzyHelpers does not perform haemodialysis and does not supply the machine, the water treatment, dialysis fluid or bags. Where a provider runs home haemodialysis, our nurse works as the trained care partner under that provider’s technician and nephrologist. For peritoneal dialysis, our nurses perform or supervise bag exchanges only after training under the PD unit’s protocol.

We replace them. A dialysis patient has to be able to tell the caregiver they feel faint, and the caregiver has to understand what the fistula arm is for and why the fluid chart matters. If either is missing, or the family is simply not comfortable, tell us and we find someone else. We do not ask families to persist with a placement that is not working, and we would rather hear about it in the first week than in the third.

It depends on whether you need dialysis-day shifts, a daily nurse, live-in attendant cover with nurse visits, or 24-hour nursing for a few weeks, and on what the patient carries alongside: a catheter, diabetes, a wound, a transplant. The assessment call is free and ends with a specific quote for your household. Our dialysis care cost guide explains what moves the number and what the dialysis itself costs in Bangalore, so you can plan the whole month.