The Daily Schedule Of A Nephrologist

Nephrologists will consult with their hospital patients on a daily basis and will manage them until they are ready to be discharged home or to rehabilitation hospitals so that they can receive dialysis, for example.

Nephrologists will be consulted by other physicians and surgeons when they have patients who need specialist kidney care. This happens quite often since the kidneys are organs that don't fair well once they are damaged. Patients with poor renal functioning will need these specialists to care for them as they may have to optimize these patients when, for example, they go for an urgent surgical procedure.

Nephrologist's offices are usually based in the hospital as it is easier to get to their admitted patients and to patients who need a nephrological consultation in the wards or the emergency rooms. These specialists will also have to provide on call services after hours and on weekends. Emergency cases such as acute renal failure and acute poisoning cases that will need dialysis are example of cases that would need to be managed by these specialists.

Monday

Mondays are usually used to manage non-clinical and administrative issues such as confirming and attending meetings with hospital staff, management and medical representatives as well as dealing with the financial aspects of a private practice.

Once these issues have been dealt with, the nephrologist will then start consulting with patients. The specialist will manage these patients conservatively by prescribing medication or referring to other healthcare personnel, sending the patients for further investigations which will be followed up and feedback will be given or they will admit patients to the ward for further tests and treatment to be given.

Tuesday

The nephrologist may use the morning to consult with patients and the afternoon to perform procedures such as the mentioned kidney and bone biopsies.

Wednesday

The nephrologist will use this day to consult with patients who need dialysis or kidney transplantation as well as counsel their family members. The latter is done so that the family members are aware that they will need to offer support to these patients, seeing that a lot of patients on dialysis are diabetic who will have other complications such as poor eyesight or amputated limbs. As an example, haemodialysis patients need to be dialysed 3 times a week and will have to travel to the nearest dialysis centre/hospital in order to do so. Peritoneal dialysis patients will need to perform the dialysis at home 3-4 times a day and may need family to help them perform this procedure.

READ Questions To Ask Yourself When Wanting To Study Medicine

Other duties on this day will include filling in of and repeating or adjusting chronic prescriptions for the patients in the dialysis unit, consulting with these patients where needed and discussing possible kidney transplant patients with their donors (if there's an individual willing to donate a kidney and there's a match) and the urologist who will be performing the procedure.

Thursday

The nephrologist will continue to consult with and manage outpatients, and the day may also be used for providing training to undergraduate medical students and postgraduate physicians.

Fridays

The specialist will consult with patients again and any unresolved administrative issues will be finalised before the work week is concluded.