Peer Support Program in Chronic Kidney Patient

The main advantage of patient-to-patient peer counseling is that it benefits both the client and the peer mentors as real and authentic experiences are shared. Since both individuals go through similar experiences, they can share common feelings. Although there are studies in the literature showing the effectiveness of peer support groups in different patient groups, studies on chronic kidney disease patients are limited. There are no studies on the effects of these programs on caregivers. This study will be conducted to examine the effects of peer support program applied to chronic kidney patients on patient outcomes and caregivers.

This study was planned to be conducted with a randomized controlled experimental design to examine the effect of the peer support program applied to Chronic Kidney patients on patient outcomes and caregivers. Patients diagnosed with Chronic Kidney Disease and receiving haemodialysis (HD) as a renal replacement method constitute the population of the study. In the a priori power analysis performed to calculate the number of subjects, the effect size was taken as 1.3 (d) based on reference studies. Accordingly, it was found that 34 subjects should be included in the calculation for the independent two-sample t-test according to 0.95 power and 0.05 alpha. The sample of the study will consist of 25 intervention and 25 control CKDs who fulfil the inclusion criteria, taking into account the dropout status.