Life without quality. Reflections of a female focus group on life, health and kidney disease.

Focus groups are increasingly employed in clinical practice as their flexible structure permits the range and depth of experiences of health service users and chronically ill individuals to be explored and recorded. A focus group workshop on quality of life was held in March 2007 involving a group of patients either awaiting transplantation, following transplantation, or with a family member who had already undergone renal replacement therapy (RRT). After intensive discussion the group produced the following consensus points.