I have more posts to share about Dad’s time in the hospital, but today, when he arrived home from the hospital, Dad sat down with his iPad and wrote these thoughts about his time as a patient. You may also enjoy the iPad for Dad series on this blog. Read more of the Senior Parent … Continue reading
Filed under hospitals …
Senior Parent Hospitalization, #3: Four Ways to Reduce Stress for Patient Families
If you like this post, please read my Senior Parent Hospitalization posts: Report #1: This Hospital Gets It, Report #2: Peace and Quiet, Report #3: Four Ways to Reduce Stress for Patient Families, Report #4: Observations from My Dad, Report #5: The Emergency Room Worked Fast, and Report #6: Learning About Cardiac Procedures and Surgeries. Still here at the hospital with … Continue reading
Read the Hot Spotters by Dr. Atul Gwande
Somehow I put aside the New Yorker Magazine with Dr. Gwande’s article, The Hot Spotters, and never got back to it. So I sat down the other day and read the entire piece — if you print it out it’s 18 pages, so it takes a while. However, the article is well worth the time … Continue reading
The Good Caregiver: Rules of the Road for Adult Children
I have just read The Good Caregiver cover-to-cover. The recently published book, by Robert L. Kane, M.D., is an all-in-one user’s guide with thorough, indexed, and therefore easy-to-find information about every aspect of elderly parent caregiving. Though he is a world-renowned specialist on aging and long-term care (Read Dr. Kane’s faculty bio), and he produces lots of … Continue reading
Senior Emergency Centers at Hospitals
If you have taken aging parents for a noisy, confusing, not to mention long, emergency visit, you will want to keep well-informed about hospitals that are developing facilities expressly tailored to seniors. Yesterday, March 14, 2011, The New York Times New Old Age Blog posted an article, Emergency Rooms Built With the Elderly in Mind. … Continue reading
More Senior Emergency Departments are Opening
More emergency rooms designed expressly for seniors are opening, according to an October 25, 2010 article in the Detroit News, Hospitals Designing Senior ERs to Cater to Needs of the Elderly. The report, by Detroit News reporter Melissa Burden, describes how hospital systems in Michigan are are opening senior ERs for the good of older … Continue reading
Green Houses? So Why Not Green Hospitals? …and Free Wireless, too
Here’s an interesting article, Crown Sky Garden Grows at New Children’s Hospital. It describes how a hospital in Chicago is trying to be green, emphasizing wellness over sickness and open, airy, and calm spaces without noises and incessant interruptions. The sky garden sounds amazing, and I hope this hospital administration can translate the peacefulness of … Continue reading
In the Hospital: Does Anyone Know What’s Happening?
When you or a family member has been in the hospital, do you know the names of the physicians who visit or the exact names of prescribed medications? Have you been informed of the side effects that might occur? Apparently a lot of people — physicians and patients — perceive things differently according to interesting … Continue reading
End-of-Life Decisions: Article by Dr. Atul Gawande
Dr. Atul Gawande has done it again — writing another compelling and riveting article that everyone will be talking about in the coming weeks. It can be downloaded at The New Yorker website. In Letting Go, published in the August 2, 2010, issue of The New Yorker Magazine, he examines how people make end-of-life decisions and how … Continue reading
NICHE: Nurses Improving Care for Healthsystem Elders
A June 29, 2010 article, Preparing More Care for the Elderly, appeared in the New York Times. Written by Milt Freudenheim, who generally writes about the business aspects of health care, the piece describes how the country and our health care system can go about preparing for the huge number of people who are aging. … Continue reading
Hospital Acquired Infections: Kojo Nnamdi Show
The Kojo Nnamdi Show on WAMU in Washington, DC, broadcast a program on hospital acquired infections on Monday, June 28, 2010. Once you go to the program link — it has not yet been posted as a podcast — the part of the program on hospital acquired infections begins at 18:22. Kojo’s guests included:
End-of-Life and Pacemakers that Keep on Going
If you are not a regular reader of the New York Times, use this link to go to What Broke My Father’s Heart, by Katie Butler, published in the June 14, 2010, NY Times Magazine. Butler writes about the enormous difficulties her family encountered after a pacemaker was inserted into her father’s chest despite that he had … Continue reading
Aging Parents, Hospitals, and Noise
The Boston Globe (Boston.com) recently published an article on hospital noise, Fixing the Noisy Hospital — a timely topic for my family. Written by Drake Bennett, the May 30, 2010, news story highlights the problem of hospital noise and its negative impact on healing. Last year I was directly involved it two hospitalizations, one for my … Continue reading
As Our Parents Age So Do We 