Peer-mentoring, Quality of Life and Caregiver Burden in Patients With Chronic Kidney Disease and Their Caregivers

Chronic kidney disease is very common in the United States, and throughout the world. An increasing number of individuals are diagnosed with late stages of chronic kidney disease, which require treatment with either dialysis or kidney transplant. The number of individuals currently requiring such treatment in the United States is greater than 600,000. Patients with advanced kidney disease and their family members face many challenges in dealing with the disease and the decisions that relate to choice of treatment. Quite frequently, patients and their family members are faced with the need to decide on a treatment option without full awareness of all the options. In such cases, they might make choices with which they will not be satisfied. Poor satisfaction with treatment choice is likely to result in poor quality of life for the patients and increased sense of burden for the caregiver. Receiving supportive mentoring from well-adjusted individuals who share similar experiences has had a positive influence on adjustment with some chronic diseases. Since 2004, the Kidney Foundation of Central Pennsylvania has conducted a program to formally train patients with kidney disease and their caregivers to become mentors for patients or caregivers who feel they might benefit from such mentoring. The program, the Patient and Family Partner Program (PFPP), was envisioned and designed by a patient with chronic kidney disease and has trained approximately 130 mentors. In this study, patients with advanced chronic kidney disease and caregivers of such patients will be randomly assigned to one of three groups: (1) face-to-face PFPP-individuals will receive six months of PFPP peer-mentoring, along with an informational text; (2) online PFPP-individuals will receive six months of online peer-mentoring modeled after the PFPP program, along with an informational text; and (3) information-only control group-individuals will receive the text of the material provided to the other two groups. The study team's decision to include an online version is based on suggestions by previous participants who indicated that this would be convenient for individuals for whom distance and geographic location are major considerations of participation. The investigators expect that both face-to-face and online peer-mentorship programs will result in improved quality of life among patients with advanced kidney disease and decreased feeling of burden among caregivers of these patients. The investigators also expect that mentorship will lead to improved engagement of patients in their own care.