Full Description
This book offers an overview of key elements of the hospital - its structure, administration, and its functioning. Students and new clinicians may be so focused on mastering specific clinical skills that they have little time to observe or question the whole process of care. This book looks beyond acute disease to the environment of care, how it works, how it doesn't work, and how it might improve. Issues discussed include understanding and communicating with families, the basics of hospital finance, how dangerous hospitalization can be to the elderly, and how to minimize errors. Medical students and residents, advanced practice nurses, and physician's assistants, are among the many potential readers for this book.
Contents
Part 1 The hospital settinghealth systems; paying for hospital care; working in teams; nursing and nursing care; training physicians in hospitals; physician assistants and nurse practitioners; medical informatics. Part 2 Caring for patients in the hospital: hospitalization can be dangerous; choosing alternatives to restraints; deciding about diets; wound care; the delirious patient; isolation; care management and case management. Part 3 Facilitating continuity of care: hospitalists; easing the transition between nursing home and hospital; discharge planning; maintaining the patient's health in the community. Part 4 Common social and ethical issues: families - roles, needs and expectations; providing culturally competent care; ethics committees and case consultation; the patient as research participant; end-of-life care planning. Part 5 Improving quality of care: minimizing errors; risk management; the role of outcomes research; creating quality improving projects.
