I crashed the social work program for Mary Beth Callahan’s talk entitled ‘Acceptance Doesn’t Mean Giving Up.’ The room was packed with nurses and social workers interested in learning about ways to incorporate palliative care and advance care planning into the dialysis setting.  One great aspect of NKF meeting is the opportunity to hear topics that are familiar to you presented to different audiences – phosphorus at the dietitian program is presented quite differently than it is in the physician program for instance. The same was true at the social work meeting. It was very interesting to see that the basics of CPR were not familiar to the social work audience, but they were far more educated about advanced care planning guidelines and far more attuned to patient wishes then the audience would be at a physician session.  So much of what we do occurs in multidisciplinary teams, so it’s really critical to get this perspective on what the learning points are for other medical professionals. They also seem to have more fun and had a much more interactive and entertaining session than the average, more serious, physician program session!

Post written by Dr. Dena Rifkin, Feature Editor for AJKD’s In a Few Words.

Check out more eAJKD coverage of the NKF’s 2014 Spring Clinical Meetings!