Part 2. The promise of symptom-targeted intervention to manage depression in dialysis patients: improving mood and quality of life outcomes.

ABSTRACT

The Practice Outcome Evaluation of using Symptom Targeted Intervention (STI) to manage depressed mood in dialysis patients reviewed social worker experiences and observations using STI. The evaluation was guided by the following questions 1. What is the feasibility of STI in nephrology social work? 2. What is nephrology social worker comfort level with clinical assessment, intervention, and tracking? 3. What is the potential efficacy of STI on reducing depression? Initial results suggest that STI enhances existing nephrology social work skills in identifying, treating, and tracking outcomes of patient issues requiring clinical intervention. Most social workers spent 1.5 hours over a six-week period using STI techniques to address symptoms of depression with a patient. This rather short period of intervention led to a reported improvement in PCS and MCS scores of 51.6% and 61.3% of patients, respectively, and improvement in CES-D scores in 72.1% of patients. While this practice outcome evaluation is limited by how social workers were selected and the small number of patients, it demonstrates options for further study of the efficacy of STI in reducing depression. The brief time invested in training holds promise for impacting nephrology social work and improving patient and dialysis clinics' outcomes.