Health Smart: Hospital Handbook--Get In, Get Well, Go Home

As a clinician involved in patient care and discharge planning, I see every day the fear and upset people experience when they enter the hospital setting. They are strangers in a strange land, unfamiliar with "medicalese" jargon, institutional routine, policies and procedures, insurance issues and basic knowledge of the human body's complexity. Their bodies are failing, and, for the most part, their lives rest in the hands of strangers. In short they are terrified.

Joseph Sacco's Hospital Handbook goes a long way in demystifying the experience, and explaining to the lay person how to make sense of and negotiate the medical system. It is also an essential resource for understanding the most common diseases, ailments and conditions from which the hospitalized patient suffers, and their treatments.

Everyone knows that it is always best to be an educated consumer, regardless of the product. Health care is a universal product, and to remain ignorant on the subject could literally cost you your life. I keep Joseph Sacco's Hospital Handbook in both my personal and professional libraries. I refer patients to it constantly, and I have given away several copies as gifts to my most cherished friends.

In addition to patients or potential patients, I would recommend this book to hospital social workers, who are in the bizarre and uncomfortable position of being both the patient's advocate and the hospital's discharge planner. The information in the Hospital Handbook is invaluable to that often under-resourced group, who have to assist the hospitalized patient in making profound decisions about life during and after the hospital stay.

No hospital social worker should be without it.

I bought this book when my father was admitted to the hospital with pneumonia. It proved an invaluable tool in helping me undestand the maze of the in-hospital stay and, as a result, I was able to advocate much more effectively for my father, ensuring a safer, shorter hospital stay. It's packed full of concrete advice and written in an easy to understand conversational tone. I found the chapter on pain management to be especially helpful. I'd highly recommend this book to anyone anticipating a hospital stay or to the loved one of a patient already in the hospital.

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