Joint working with hospice teams: a renal collaborative approach

There are over 600 million people in the world aged 60 years and over. This figure is expected to double by 2025 and to reach 2 billion by 2050 (1). Population ageing is characteristically accompanied by an increase in the burden of chronic non-communicable diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancers and renal failure. As a consequence, pressures on health systems worldwide will increase (1). Data produced by the National Renal Workforce Planning Group in 2002 (2), predicted that the demand for renal replacement therapy (RRT) will continue to rise beyond 2010 for many reasons one of those being demographic changes with an aging population. This will also have an impact on the numbers of patients predicted to commence dialysis and transplantation (Table 1). With this higher projection of patients requiring RRT, there is a need to look at new ways of working.