Introduction. Chronic renal failure progresses with periods of exacerbation and improvement together with awareness of its incurability or awaiting a transplant. The development of the disease cannot be stopped or cured and the application of dialysis prolongs a patient’s life. Thus a patient experiences difficult situations related with constant occurrence of ailments or demonstration of new ones. Aim of the study. The objective of this work was to determine the impact of hemodialysis on psycho‑social functioning of patients. Material and methods. The research was conducted in Tarnów i Brzesko. It involved 74 research participants aged 25 to 86, the average age of the surveyed was M = 66 lat (SD = 1.5 years). The research was carried out at these centres in the first half of the year 2015. In the study a short author’s own survey and Kidney Disease Quality of Life (KDQOL‑SF 1.3) form assessing quality of life of patients in renal replacing therapy were used. The statistical analysis was conducted with the use of Pl 8.0 (StatSoft) statistics package. Results. Almost all individuals (92%) admitted that due to their emotional problems they had reduced their time spent on work or on other activities. With age, the amount of time spent on work or purposed for performing other activities decreases (p = 0.033), whereas difficulties at work or while performing other activities occur most frequently due to health condition (p = 0.003). The longer the hemodialysis method treatment was, the more frequently the studied individuals would reduce the kind of work or other activities performed, and this for health reasons (p = 0.005). Conclusions. Age and duration of dialysis determine patients’ functioning in the social, vocational and emotional spheres. The state of being of dialysed patients is worse than the state of being of a healthy person, which is contributed to occurring side‑effects and complications in renal replacing therapy.

Key words: hemodialysis, chronic renal failure, kidney diseases.