The Warehouse – Donations to the new Kaitaia Renal Unit

16 November 2011

The Warehouse – Donations to the new Kaitaia Renal Unit - Kaitaia Hospital

Kaitaia Hospital’s renal team would like to take this opportunity to thank The Warehouse Kaitaia, for another generous donation of $1,361.75 specifically earmarked for patient comfort use at Kaitaia Hospital’s renal unit.

Manager at The Warehouse Kaitaia, Michelle Fahey, says “Our team voted and selected the renal unit as recipients of this donation. Because we have team members with family who are affected by dialysis, and we wanted to do something special for them and our community. These donations are from the sale of plastic bags in store - this initiative has also had a positive affect on the environment and has reduced wastage overall.”

This is the second generous donation from The Warehouse. Every six months the Warehouse team vote to donate to a different local cause.

Renal service manager, Cheryle Kiwi says “We are about to celebrate our first year anniversary on November 24th. A dialysis unit based in Kaitaia has given greater independence to patients who reside in the Far North”.

“We have a number of Far North patients who have been having dialysis treatment with us for a number of years, so it’s really exciting to be able to offer patients the opportunity to dialyse closer to home”.

The Kaitaia satellite renal unit is similar to the satellite unit located at Bay of Islands Hospital.

“A satellite unit is not a specialist centre and patients who dialyse at Kaitaia Hospital, need to be able to undertake treatment tasks independently or with minimal staff supervision. When a patient is particularly unwell or the complexity of their health problems requires input from other specialists, they will need to travel to Whangarei Hospital for specialist treatment.

The clinical safety of the satellite units has been enhanced by the investment in telemedicine. This technology allows specialists and other senior clinical staff the ability to provide clinical support and guidance to staff at peripheral sites.

Kaitaia Hospital operations manager Neta Smith says seeing one of the services at Kaitaia Hospital benefit locally from a local initiative is great.

Around 40 per cent of new referrals to the Northland regional service are people with diabetes. Maori and Pacific people are the highest risk of developing diabetes and going on to develop renal (kidney) disease which is a major cause of chronic illness in Northland.

Renal replacement therapy encompasses the range of life-supporting treatments used in the management of a patient’s renal failure. The treatment modalities include haemodialysis, peritoneal dialysis and renal transplantation.

Overall, there are about 160 patients who use some form of dialysis or renal replacement therapy in Northland (92 haemodialysis, 36 peritoneal dialysis and 32 on home haemodialysis). Additionally, there are patients who just “fall in” or become acute without warning, creating additional, unforeseen demand on dialysis services.

ENDS

© Scoop Media