A Special Report from WCN 2026 – Reimagining Home Dialysis Through Nurse Empowerment

When it comes to communicating a message, nothing beats passion, and Professor Josephine Chow delivered her presentation at the 2026 World Congress of Nephrology on how empowering nurses is crucial to expanding home dialysis services with plenty of passion. Discussing a topic that is clearly dear to her heart, Prof Chow reminded her audience of the need to recognise the central role nurses play in home dialysis programs: her final take home message of “Empowering home dialysis nurses is likely to improve home dialysis outcomes. Empower home dialysis nurses and the whole home-dialysis team powers up” left audience members in no doubt as to what was important for growing your dialysis program. 

After outlining the importance of home dialysis and the global trend to increases use of home dialysis and the strategic need to scale home modalities, Prof. Chow highlighted the pivotal role nurses play, with education, training, ongoing support just a few of the key functions nurses undertake. 

However, being a PD nurse has its challenges globally. Limited training, high workloads (often with fragmented roles), restricted pathways to leadership roles and ever increasing tech demands (often without support), mean the life of a PD nurse can be challenging. There are things that can be done to overcome some of these challenges: increased training, strong multi-disciplinary team culture and a safe, supportive work environment can strengthen nursing capabilities.

As the lead author of the multi-centre, multi-national RCT TEACH-PD  also presented some of the key findings from this landmark trial comparing standardised PD training with usual care. And while the results were surprising, the learnings from this trial have prompted further investigation and may lead to changes in the way nurses, and ultimately patients, are trained in self-management of PD.