You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
A professor of intensive care asks why so many elderly people linger in pain and confusion in ICU when all they want is to die at home in peace and with their loved ones. A crucial and timely rallying cry against unnecessary suffering and for humanity and gentle acceptance at the end of our lives. A huge majority of people at the end of their lives want to die at home, but only a small number manage to do this. This vital book asks why. Many of us have experienced an elderly loved one coming to the end of their life in a hospital - over-treated, infantilised and, worst of all, facing a death without dignity. Families are being herded into making decisions that are not to the benefit of the p...
Successor to the editors' groundbreaking book on medical emergency teams, Textbook of Rapid Response Systems addresses the problem of patient safety and quality of care; the logistics of creating an RRS (resource allocation, process design, workflow, and training); the implementation of an RRS (organizational issues, challenges); and the evaluation of program results. Based on successful RRS models that have resulted in reduced in-hospital cardiac arrest and overall hospital death rates, this book is a practical guide for physicians, hospital administrators, and other healthcare professionals who wish to initiate an RRS program within their own institutions.
A huge majority of people at the end of their lives want to die at home, but only a small number manage to do this. This vital book asks why. Many of us have experienced an elderly loved one coming to the end of their life in a hospital - over-treated, infantilised and, worst of all, facing a death without dignity. Families are being herded into making decisions that are not to the benefit of the patient. Professor Ken Hillman has worked in intensive care since its inception. But he is appalled by the way the ICU has become a place where the frail, soon-to-die and dying are given unnecessary operations and life-prolonging treatments without their wishes being taken into account. A Good Life ...
This new edition provides an accessible account of the essentials of intensive care medicine. The core of the book focuses on areas common to all critically ill patients including fluid therapy, sedation, shock, infection and other central topics. This key understanding of basic pathophysiological principles provides an excellent launch pad for the section on individual disease entities encompassing haematology, gastroenterology, nephrology, endocrinology, the respiratory system, cardiovascular pathology, poisoning and neurology. Economic and ethical issues are also covered, and the text is supported by numerous problem-oriented guidelines to help the care provider tackle real-life practical problems as encountered in the ICU. In the same spirit, wherever possible, the authors provide precise and meaningful advice, rather than bland generalisations. This new edition reflects the excitement, challenges and uniqueness of intensive care medicine, for the benefit of all residents, trainees, nursing staff and paramedics attached to the ICU.
Promising Care: How We Can Rescue Health Care by Improving It collects 16 speeches given over a period of 10 years by Donald M. Berwick, an internationally acclaimed champion of health care improvement throughout the course of his long and storied career as a physician, health care educator and policy expert, leader of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), and administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. These landmark speeches (including all of Berwick's speeches delivered at IHI's annual National Forum on Quality Improvement in Health Care from 2003 to 2012) clearly show why our medical systems don't reliably contribute to our overall health. As a remedy he offe...
One of the first comprehensive summaries of the latest thinking and research in improving intensive care quality and patient safety.
Why Critical Care Evolved METs? In early 2004, when Dr. Michael DeVita informed me that he was cons- ering a textbook on the new concept of Medical Emergency Teams (METs), I was surprised. At Presbyterian-University Hospital in Pittsburgh we int- duced this idea some 15 years ago, but did not think it was revolutionary enough to publish. This, even though, our fellows in critical care medicine training were all involved and informed about the importance of “C- dition C (Crisis),” as it was called to distinguish it from “Condition A (Arrest). ”We thought it absurd to intervene only after cardiac arrest had occurred,because most cases showed prior deterioration and cardiac arrest could...
Written by a practicing intensive care clinician, this unique collection shares the experiences of intensive care patients and their families. Demonstrating how ordinary people cope in the face of terrible tragedies, this inspiring account journeys inside an intensive care unit and reveals the daily struggles of caring staff members in this critical environment. Filled with humorous and heartbreaking moments, this compilation will appeal to healthcare students as well as those dealing with the death of a loved one.
The origin of modern intensive care units (ICUs) has frequently been attributed to the widespread provision of mechanical ventilation within dedicated hospital areas during the 1952 Copenhagen polio epidemic. However, modern ICUs have developed to treat or monitor patients who have any severe, life-threatening disease or injury. These patients receive specialized care and vital organ assistance such as mechanical ventilation, cardiovascular support, or hemodialysis. ICU patients now typically occupy approximately 10% of inpatient acute care beds, yet the structure and organization of these ICUs can be quite different across hospitals. In The Organization of Critical Care: An Evidence-Based A...
As the country recognizes the 101st birthday of former President Ronald Reagan, this memoir offers insight into a local Anglo-Protestant community in Westchester, California, that was but one grain of sand in a sea of change that led to the Reagan Revolution. In the early 1980s, this cohort of Anglo-Protestants reached out to neighborhood youngsters in a dedicated attempt to save them from hell. Julian Segura Camacho, a Mexican American teenager living in California at the time, soon found himself attending an all-white church, primarily upper class but still sprinkled with less fortunate ones. This Assembly of God church became a family and much like any relationship, Camacho found pleasure and anguish as different personalities played themselves out. As a member of this communal religious and racialized space, Camacho was able to see firsthand how the Reagan Revolution attracted those who felt the US was becoming too secular. Yet this book is not political; it is simply a story of a Mexican American boy engaged in a seven-year routine of bible study, youth and boy scout activities, and camping trips, along with sermons about the coming of Christ, and the evils of Darwinism."