How patients with end-stage renal disease manage their condition.

PURPOSE The main research problem is to answer the following question: What ways of coping with situations of end-stage renal disease are used by the studied patients? To measure strategies of coping with stressful situations, The Ways of Coping Questionnaire (WCQ), devised by Folkman and Lazarus, was used. MATERIAL AND METHODS As examined group, the men with end-stage renal disease (N=113), including patients with a transplanted kidney (N=54) and dialyzed patients (N=59), was chosen. The analysis of these situations shows that from the psychological point of view, they are, to a certain extent, different situations. In this connection, the following question appears: Is there a relationship between the ways of coping with disease and the applied methods of treatment: dialysis therapy and transplantation? RESULTS Our findings shows that there are no perceptible, statistically essential differences in the applied strategies, evaluated by means of WCQ, between patients with a transplanted kidney and the ones dialyzed. Perhaps, despite the differences presented above in this argument, situations of patients with a transplanted kidney and the ones dialyzed are similar in some significant way, and this is reflected in the strategies they adopt. One of such common features for the situations of both groups of patients is a real, continuous threat of losing life. The situations studied are uncontrollable situations that can actually be influenced by nobody. CONCLUSIONS The results of research have been shown the lack of statistically essential differences in the applied strategies, evaluated by means of WCQ, between patients with a transplanted kidney and the dialyzed ones.