Your Patient Safety Survival Guide

Each year, one out of every four hospital patients in the United States will be harmed by the care they receive. Over 400,000 will die as a result. Dr. Gretchen LeFever Watson's definitive guide empowers patients to be patient safety advocates. It takes a village to combat preventable errors and omissions that cause millions of deaths and sickness in our nation’s hospitals and care facilities. Although most of these deaths are due to human and system errors—not faulty medical decisions or diagnoses—this annual death toll—as well as the millions of additional incidents of survivable patient harm—could be cut in half through consistent use of simple and nearly cost-free safety behaviors. In Your Patient Safety Survival Guide, Gretchen LeFever Watson delivers a patient-centered blueprint on how to transform the patient-safety movement so that millions of unnecessary illnesses and deaths in hospitals, outpatient facilities, and nursing homes can be avoided. She provides key safety habits that people must learn to recognize so they can be sure hospital personnel use them during every patient encounter. She also explains how addressing the most common safety problems will set the stage for tackling a wide range of issues, including healthcare’s role in the overuse of opiate painkillers and its related heroin epidemic. Watson’s call for a more sensible societal response to medical and human error in hospitals promotes a timely and full disclosure of all mistakes—an approach that has been proven to accelerate the emotional recovery of everyone affected by patient safety events while also reducing the financial burden on hospitals, providers, and patients. Readers will learn how to: • Change behavior to catch medical errors before they result in illness or death. • Prevent the spread of dangerous infections in hospitals and other care facilities. • Leverage the power of basic safety/hygiene habits. • Eliminate mistakes during surgery and other invasive procedures. • Avoid medication errors and the overuse of opiates • Raise awareness and inspire civic action in their communities.

Hospital Survival Guide: The Patient Handbook to Getting Better and Getting Out is the essential patient handbook to ensure that you and your family emerge from hospital visits healthier than before checking-in and without having to endure excessive stays, pain or indignities. Includes practical tips, warnings and surprising information you doctor might not tell you, such as the fact that July, when the new interns start, is the most dangerous month to have a procedure done at a teaching hospital; EMLA anesthetic cream can be requested to be used on children's skin, allowing for less painful I.V. starts; and washing off all iodine-based antiseptics thoroughly after surgery can prevent chemical burns. Proven tips for reducing hospital bills are also presented.

Further to the success of the previous editions, A Nurse's Survival Guide to the Ward continues to be the indispensable guide to all the procedures and problems faced by nurses and healthcare professionals every day. Whether you are a clinical practicing student or a qualified nurse, this book is the perfect straightforward reference for every doubt you might have about emergency situations, as well as assessments, clinical procedures and much more. What will you find in this updated edition: Completely updated and revised content written by well-known authors with extensive experience in the field; Up-to-date legal issues, health and safety, professional practice issues and ethics in nursing; Expansions of areas such as oxygen administration, fluid and electrolyte balance and nutrition Completely updated and revised content written by well-known authors with extensive experience in the field; Up-to-date legal issues, health and safety, professional practice issues and ethics in nursing; Expansions of areas such as oxygen administration, fluid and electrolyte balance and nutrition

This guide offers practical tips to ensure that patients emerge from their hospital visits healthier than they were before they checked in and without having to endure excessive pain or indignities. Included are practical tips and warnings such as the fact that July, when the new interns start, is the most dangerous month to have a procedure done at a teaching hospital; EMLA anesthetic cream can be requested to be used on children's skin, allowing for less painful I.V. starts; and washing off all iodine-based antiseptics thoroughly after surgery can prevent chemical burns. Proven tips for reducing hospital bills are also presented.

Despite the evolution and growing awareness of patient safety, many medical professionals are not a part of this important conversation. Clinicians often believe they are too busy taking care of patients to adopt and implement patient safety initiatives and that acknowledging medical errors is an affront to their skills. Patient Safety provides clinicians with a better understanding of the prevalence, causes and solutions for medical errors; bringing best practice principles to the bedside. Written by experts from a variety of backgrounds, each chapter features an analysis of clinical cases based on the Root Cause Analysis (RCA) methodology, along with case-based discussions on various patient safety topics. The systems and processes outlined in the book are general and broadly applicable to institutions of all sizes and structures. The core ethic of medical professionals is to “do no harm”. Patient Safety is a comprehensive resource for physicians, nurses and students, as well as healthcare leaders and administrators for identifying, solving and preventing medical error.

Whether you’re a student nurse on clinical placement or a healthcare worker on a busy ward, you need practical guidance at your fingertips, fast! This pocket-sized guide will help you to provide safe, effective, everyday patient care. The Nursing & Health Survival Guides have evolved - take a look at our our app for iPhone and iPad.

Gold Winner 2012 Foreword Reviews Book of The Year, Health Category The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates 1.7 million people developed healthcare acquired infections in 2010. Since most people spend only a small part of their lives in healthcare facilities, this guidebook also tells readers how to avoid picking up serious infections in day care centers, schools, business offices, and other common locations. Unlike other books, which focus on how to change the hospital systems, The Patient Survival Guide focuses on empowering you with the knowledge and techniques to ensure a safer healthcare experience. The Patient Survival Guide: Inspires you to be a your own advocate Describes in vivid detail how your preparation and informed vigilance can significantly reduce the chances of harm and death to your loved one in a hospital Provides specific, practical, and outside-the-box strategies for anticipating and preventing errors, with chapters devoted to each of the most common mistakes and mishaps Provides checklists for patients to use upon admission to healthcare facilities