Dialysis Technician

Patients with kidney disease are sometimes required to use a dialysis machine. This machine performs most of the tasks that working kidneys would be performing, and it is understandably a fairly complicated machine. As a Dialysis Technician, you’re the one responsible for the operation and maintenance of this big, robotic kidney.

Dialysis Technicians won’t be working directly with the patients in the same way as, say, a Dialysis Nurse would. You’re less Patch Adams and more like Patch Adam’s Mechanic. But even though you aren’t the patient’s go-to for questions, your role in patient care is absolutely crucial, and you’ll be saving lives every day you work. In fact, although you won’t be using medical knowledge to care for patients, you’re going to be spending approximately 12 hours a week with each patient using the machine, and these people generally need encouragement and support. So, an empathetic ear and a friendly tongue are two helpful body parts for Dialysis Technicians to have.

The emotional demands on you can be trying, but there’s more. On the technical side, you need to be able to read and understand graphs quickly and accurately so that know if the machine is working for the patient, and if it isn’t, how to fix it. You also need to be able to set up, tear down, and sterilize the dialysis machines quickly and easily.