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
Available from Outskirts Press and from Amazon:
How to Manage Nursing Care at Home
No comments:
Post a Comment