Shaping the Future of Renal Care

The EDTNA/ERCA promotes and enhances the quality of renal care across Europe through education, research and the implementation of standards. Each year at the annual international conference it brings together thousands of expert professionals, service leaders, academics, researchers and industry partners to share innovations evidence, knowledge and opinions regarding best practice and patient care.

The theme of the 38^th EDTNA/ERCA International Conference is ‘Shaping the Future of Renal Care’. The conference provides an environment for professional discussion, questioning and the opportunity to develop strong international networks and partnerships. Focusing on the main conference theme, the Future of Renal Care the conference calls for innovative and high quality abstracts under the following conference sub-themes:

• Prevention and delay of the onset of chronic kidney disease: including the multi-professional approach to pre-dialysis patient care; methods and techniques used to treat patients early; managing co-morbid conditions such as diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular disease to prevent complications; health promotion for lifestyle changes including diet or exercise to combat problems such as obesity
• Advancements and innovations in Renal Replacement Therapy: is a theme subdivided to include three main treatment groups. Abstracts are encouraged that highlight and examine the forefront of practice, and/or question the future direction of renal replacement therapy.
  • Haemodialysis (HD) – acute and chronic HD; cutting edge vascular access; reducing and managing complications; improving patient safety; fluid and diet management and assessment; future initiatives and advancements for HD.
  • Peritoneal Dialysis (PD) – including managing acute renal failure with PD; assisted PD; increasing or decreasing patient numbers, is there a future for PD?; combating problems such as encapsulated peritoneal sclerosis the way forward.
  • Transplantation – including ethical and equitable kidney donation; buying and selling kidneys; incentives for donation; the future for drug treatments and the recognition of side effects, such as cancer related problems; advances in kidney transplantation across blood group or cross match barriers; transplant problems and successes anticipated in the future
• Conservative Management / End of Life Care: this theme encompasses the multi-professional approach to the conservative management of a patient coming to the end of their life; identifying the needs of conservative management patients; the current and future provision of palliative care.
• Meeting the needs of the CKD patient (Psychosocial Care): To meet CKD patients’ needs in the future it is important to generate a deeper multi-professional understanding of the patient for which we care. Abstracts are called for that identify and enhance the patients psychosocial needs; uncover and measure patient information needs; explain and promote patient self-care and autonomy; patient education; alongside measuring and monitoring patient outcomes that shape service provision. 
• Management of both the Service and Team: this theme is subdivided to reflect three substantial and important management areas, those pertinent to team management, appropriate education and training and those reflecting service and quality improvements. 
  • Staff and Team Management – this includes the management of nursing, dietetic, social work and technical teams; addressing multi-professional education and training; ensuring a competent workforce; stress management; developing future team/service leaders; managing current and prospective staff shortages and workload issues; including innovative recruitment and retention initiatives.  
  • Education of the Multi-disciplinary Team – future knowledge and skills of the workforce; where are the education gaps; preceptorship models are they effective; competency measurement; use of on-line resources; new and innovative ways to develop and deliver multi-professional renal education in the future.
  • Service and Quality improvements – evaluations of new multi-professional service initiatives; service re-design; quality improvement; increasing patient safety and managing risk; introduction and evaluation of new roles; infection control; continuous audit; aspects of practice on which to focus in the future.
• Tools or Toys? Future Technical Advances: of particular interest are abstracts that examine whether aspects of practice or particular technical advances improve the quality of patient care and patient safety or are simply an unnecessary expense, for example vascular clamps and some of the latest monitoring devices; in addition what technical advances will shape the future of renal care and how?
• Open forum: This final open theme allows the submission of abstracts that do not fall into one of pre-determined conference themes but are of particular interest in the renal field and pertinent to shaping the future of renal care.

Abstract guidelines have been developed to enhance the quality of the abstract submission and ensure sufficient information is presented to allow a fair peer review assessment (see appropriate web page). However, if you are considering presenting your work and would like help to write an abstract, please contact your Key Member within your particular country who will be happy to offer further advice. Further information can be found at www.edtnaerca.org. We look forward to welcoming you to our conference in Hamburg, Germany 5-8 September 2009.

Paula Ormandy
Scientific Programme Committee Chair