Who should provide continuous renal replacement therapies? Nephrology nurses are better prepared to provide CRRT

Although critical care nurses are fully capable of learning CRRT, there are substantial, irrefutable challenges to achieving and sustaining proficiency. There is also diminished opportunity and motivation for critical care nurses to advance CRRT practice through quality initiatives, education, or research when it is a small piece of their practice. Consequently, I believe that it is incumbent upon acute care nephrology nurses to clarify the magnitude and value of what we do and to support our critical care colleagues in doing what they do best. The debate as to who should perform CRRT began in an effort to explore the better opportunity for cost-saving; but, in the end, it really boils down to the better opportunity for life-saving. I suspect improving outcomes for patients requiring CRRT will ultimately save hospitals more money than the short-sighted gains from critical care nurses performing tasks outside of universally-applied critical care RN processes.