Surviving Health Care

A Guide to Surviving Medical Care is a frank and sometimes unsettling manuscript recounting a two-year battle with end-stage kidney disease. The author writes from the unique vantage point of someone who has worked in medicine and experienced it as a patient. This guidebook prepares patients to become partners in their medical care and, in so doing, to enhance their chances for the best possible outcome. The author offers nine empowering steps everyone can take to increase understanding, improve mindset, and maximize the opportunity for survival. It is a powerful and personal story clearly and skillfully told, a must-read for medical students, doctors, patients, and anyone with loved ones confronting severe illnesses.

Healthcare has changed immensely over the past few generations—house calls from a local family doctor are a thing of the past, and the deeply personal relationships and bonds between provider and patient are eroding with the demands of for-profit insurance. As a family practitioner focused on cradle-to-grave care, author Barb Regis has a valuable perspective on how patients can experience better outcomes. Topics addressed in this information-packed book include how to choose a primary care physician, how to plan for catastrophic healthcare costs, how to comparison shop for medication, and how to be an effective advocate for yourself and loved ones. As the daughter of a busy family doctor, Barb also shares vivid anecdotes from her childhood which illuminate the heart of a doctor’s calling and demonstrate how insurance can dictate and interfere with quality of care. This book is a must-read for everyone who wants to make informed, effective decisions about healthcare—knowledge is power!

Millions of low-income African Americans in the United States lack access to health care. How do they treat their health care problems? In Health Care Off the Books, Danielle T. Raudenbush provides an answer that challenges public perceptions and prior scholarly work. Informed by three and a half years of fieldwork in a public housing development, Raudenbush shows how residents who face obstacles to health care gain access to pharmaceutical drugs, medical equipment, physician reference manuals, and insurance cards by mobilizing social networks that include not only their neighbors but also local physicians. However, membership in these social networks is not universal, and some residents are forced to turn to a robust street market to obtain medicine. For others, health problems simply go untreated. Raudenbush reconceptualizes U.S. health care as a formal-informal hybrid system and explains why many residents who do have access to health services also turn to informal strategies to treat their health problems. While the practices described in the book may at times be beneficial to people’s health, they also have the potential to do serious harm. By understanding this hybrid system, we can evaluate its effects and gain new insight into the sources of social and racial disparities in health outcomes.

Endangered Private Practice explains how private practices are being absorbed by the current health care reform movement as a way to control costs, limit access, decrease disparities, and increase quality of care. This is the story of a fading art being squashed by the interests of business and politics. Also shared are many of the providers' concerns and fears for the future of medical and mental health care services.

Letter to patients : on becoming the "good" patient and finding the "right" doctor / Leonard C. Groopman -- Becoming an active member of your health care team / William A. Norcross -- Information that will help you with advance planning for your health care / Mark R. Wicclair -- Responding to medical emergencies / Kenneth V. Iserson -- What you need to know about medical errors / Erica S. Friedman and Rosamond Rhodes -- Being informed when you give consent to medical care / Ben A. Rich -- Beware of scorecards / James J. Strain and Rosamond Rhodes -- Transplantation 101 : negotiating the system / Aaron Spital and Steven Smith -- When the illness is psychiatric / Leonard C. Groopman -- On the horizon : genetic testing / Robyn S. Shapiro -- To be or not to be, a research subject / Eric M. Meslin and Peter H. Schwartz -- Information that will help you make health care decisions for adult family members / Mark R. Wicclair -- Caring for individuals with Alzheimer's : ethical issues along the way / Robyn S. Shapiro -- When the patient is a child / Timothy S. Yeh -- Care of elders / Claudia Landau and Guy Micco -- Being and thinking / Ilina Singh [und weitere] -- A patient's guide to pain management / Ben A. Rich -- The hardest decisions : when treatment stops working / Timothy E. Quill and Mindy Shah -- What you need to know about disasters / Griffin Trotter -- Making the internet work for you : researching your health questions / Bette Anton.

Surviving Your Doctors, with its in-depth explanations, guidance, and direction will be the basic training manual patients need to work their way through the health care maze. It serves as a map of the medical minefield, told from the perspective of a doctor yet designed to reveal the faults in the system and the things that can and do go wrong during the course of both routine and special procedures and office visits. Filled with real stories of medical mishaps, anecdotes, and checklists, this book will walk readers through major areas of the medical world - from the doctor's office to the pharmacy, from the laboratory to the ER - giving them a clearer picture of how things really work, what health care workers really think, and how to take back control of their health and the care they receive.

Self-Care for Allied Health Professionals brings together a collection of self-care strategies into one easy-to-read volume, supporting Allied Health Professionals to do the best for their patients by caring for themselves. The book offers information and practical strategies to look after your physical and emotional wellbeing at home and in the workplace, exploring topics such as sleep and food, resilience and meditation, stress, conflict and adversity. Written to be a flexible tool that can be read cover to cover or dipped in and out of as needed, it offers rapid response self-care strategies alongside more lasting changes, supporting practitioners to make small steps to build healthy habits for the future. Key features of this book include: –– A combination of quick response strategies, like a five-minute breathing exercise you can use before a difficult meeting, and opportunities for deeper work, examining your purpose and aligning your role with your values. –– Combines ancient practices of meditation and mindfulness with the latest research on nutrition, exercise, sleep and wellbeing. –– Consideration of the challenges professionals face in the context of pandemics and a changing health and social care landscape, helping you to thrive in a challenging world. Self-care has never been more important. This is a book that every Allied Health Professional and trainee should have on their desk, to improve productivity, enhance job satisfaction and build resilience for whatever the future brings.

During the last 25 years, life expectancy at age 50 in the United States has been rising, but at a slower pace than in many other high-income countries, such as Japan and Australia. This difference is particularly notable given that the United States spends more on health care than any other nation. Concerned about this divergence, the National Institute on Aging asked the National Research Council to examine evidence on its possible causes. According to Explaining Divergent Levels of Longevity in High-Income Countries, the nation's history of heavy smoking is a major reason why lifespans in the United States fall short of those in many other high-income nations. Evidence suggests that current obesity levels play a substantial part as well. The book reports that lack of universal access to health care in the U.S. also has increased mortality and reduced life expectancy, though this is a less significant factor for those over age 65 because of Medicare access. For the main causes of death at older ages-cancer and cardiovascular disease-available indicators do not suggest that the U.S. health care system is failing to prevent deaths that would be averted elsewhere. In fact, cancer detection and survival appear to be better in the U.S. than in most other high-income nations, and survival rates following a heart attack also are favorable. Explaining Divergent Levels of Longevity in High-Income Countries identifies many gaps in research. For instance, while lung cancer deaths are a reliable marker of the damage from smoking, no clear-cut marker exists for obesity, physical inactivity, social integration, or other risks considered in this book. Moreover, evaluation of these risk factors is based on observational studies, which-unlike randomized controlled trials-are subject to many biases.

A narrative non-fiction book to educate anyone accessing the American Healthcare System proactively.

Many Americans believe that people who lack health insurance somehow get the care they really need. Care Without Coverage examines the real consequences for adults who lack health insurance. The study presents findings in the areas of prevention and screening, cancer, chronic illness, hospital-based care, and general health status. The committee looked at the consequences of being uninsured for people suffering from cancer, diabetes, HIV infection and AIDS, heart and kidney disease, mental illness, traumatic injuries, and heart attacks. It focused on the roughly 30 million-one in seven-working-age Americans without health insurance. This group does not include the population over 65 that is covered by Medicare or the nearly 10 million children who are uninsured in this country. The main findings of the report are that working-age Americans without health insurance are more likely to receive too little medical care and receive it too late; be sicker and die sooner; and receive poorer care when they are in the hospital, even for acute situations like a motor vehicle crash.