MANAGE NURSING CARE AT HOME, Dedication, Acknowledgments, Preface

DEDICATION

For those who take on the difficult and generous task of caring for their patients in the context of the family home.

In memory of Diana Winslow Cooper, LPN, who cared deeply and well for all her patients and for her family and was, in return, much loved, and in memory of our dear mother, Priscilla Taylor Cooper, also greatly loved.  

In memory of Donald J. Steinbrenner, Diane Beggin’s beloved twin brother.  Don died much too young from consequences of hemophilia.  His death, but foremost his perseverance in living with a chronic disease, and the birth of her hemophiliac son helped kindle Diane's interest in medicine and nursing.

And in memory of our colleague Angela J. Mullins, LPN, whose skilled care, humor, and great personal warmth have been greatly missed, due to her tragically early death.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We appreciate the help we have gotten from the doctors and nurses involved in our own situation of providing nursing care at home and, most recently, in the writing of this book. We thank the following:

Drs. A. Baradaran, P. Chidyllo, A. Fruchter, F. Guneratne, S. Koyfman, R. F. Walker, and the doctors and nurses at Orange Regional Medical Center, Middletown, NY, who have given the care that has helped preserve our patients’ lives.

Cheryl C. Cohen for her friendship, encouragement, and editorial aid.

Eboni Ivory Green, PhD, RN for sharing her medical and editorial expertise and for contributing to our book her Foreword and Appendix 1 on tips for caregivers.

Adria Goldman Gross for her friendship and generous sharing of portions of our co-authored book, SOLVED! Curing Your Medical Insurance Problems.

IBM, for their continuing generous support for the past twelve years for skilled nursing care at home of our beloved Tina S. Cooper.

Rick Lauber, for his encouraging comments, and his highly informative The Successful Caregiver’s Guide.

Ellen Puleo, LPN, for her skilled nursing help and her editorial aid, and for their helpful comments: Luanne Furman, RN; Annamarie Carotenuto-Odland, RN; and Maureen McDermott, RN, BA, MA, CCRN.

Tena L. Scallan, for her supportive words and her encyclopedic The Ultimate Compassionate Guide to Caregiving.

PREFACE

     According to AARP (2015), 16.6%, one out of every six, of Americans provide unpaid care to an adult. In many cases, this care goes beyond custodial care and qualifies as skilled nursing care.

    

     We wrote this book to make it easier for those who step forward to provide care in their home for a family member or friend, although not being trained medical professionals themselves. One can manage something without being an expert, but it does require a working knowledge of the major concepts and implementation of some variety of systematization. Whether you are managing the care at home or just monitoring care being given at home by an agency, this book should be of assistance to you in understanding what is needed and what is being done.

Having managed nursing care at home for my wife, bedridden with multiple sclerosis for over two decades, with around-the-clock skilled nursing for the past twelve years, involving ventilator use and gastric tube feeding and medicating, I [DWC] decided to prepare this book, with our head nurse [DRB], to help others succeed in managing or monitoring nursing care at home, for themselves and their loved ones.

     Diane R. Beggin, RN, became our head nurse soon after starting with us in 2004, and she has developed many of the systems and documents we have used to care for my wife and also, for the past several years, to care for my bedridden, nearly-100-year-old mother, Priscilla Taylor Cooper, who died in November of 2015.

     How to Manage Nursing Care at Home tells its readers what to expect and gives them the necessary information and structure, in terms of needed forms, “charts,” to understand and oversee the nursing care given by RNs and LPNs.

    

     We invite our readers to contact us with their questions and with recommendations for our subsequent publications on providing nursing care at home.

Douglas Winslow Cooper, PhD

264 East Drive, Walden, NY 12586

douglas@tingandi.com

Diane R. Beggin, RN

40 Sycamore Drive, Montgomery, NY 12549

DianeBegginRN@gmail.com


Available from Outskirts Press and from Amazon:

How to Manage Nursing Care at Home