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Hospital Survival Guide: The Patient Handbook to Getting Better and Getting Out
WHY YOU SHOULD NEVER HAVE AN OPERATION IN JULY AND OTHER LIFESAVING ADVICE! "This book offers practical advice about how to keep yourself free from harm and error in hospitals, and how to assert yourself in cases such as getting stuck with a bad roommate or a rude doctor. Includes chapters on taking children to the hospital and how to be prepared before an emergency." — The Wall Street Journal 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. Dr Sherer will teach you how to: "I recommend this book for everyone, especially people who are undergoing their first operation in a hospital. Being aware of the services offered or not offered in the hospital and learning ways to reduce anxiety can be invaluable throughout one’s hospital stay. For health care providers, the Hospital Survival Guide offers excellent insight into many of the uncertainties that patients face as they enter into the unknown world of the hospital. Even though we hear the alarming statistics every day, the book is a powerful reminder of all of the mistakes that can be made in the course of care and what we all can do to reduce the likelihood of experiencing a medical error ourselves." — P&T® Journal
300 pages, Paperback
Published August 11, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 13, 2022
A decent reference manual in need of a bias edit. Author shines when he sticks to explaining the facts. Sherer jeopardizes readability when he inserts his own biased rhetoric or fails to present accurate (and easily verified) facts.
First, he employs inaccurate terminology without also providing the accurate corollary (“Obamacare” instead of the correct ACA) and has incorrect statistics (p. 317: “the 10 billion or so people living on our planet”); as of the book’s writing there were less than 8 billion people…author is off by a good 2 billion. Yikes.
Sherer inserts his own personal argument that universal healthcare is not a workable solution and questions citizens’ right to healthcare by using birds flying and fish swimming as analogies…or maybe it’s something about fish flying and birds swimming. Either way, we didn’t come here for this—this is in no way part of what readers are seeking in a so-called “Hospital Survival Guide”. Might be less concerning if in the same pages the doctor didn’t continue to blame patients for their own ill health: (p. 326 “Will people start taking better care of themselves? Knowing human nature […] I think not”); his speculation—and that’s all it is, speculation—is completely divorced from sociocultural reality.
No mention at all of forces that conspire against the body such as food deserts, lack of mass transit, capitalist work hours, racism, etc? Or about women who have conditions like thyroid imbalance or PCOS and struggle to maintain their weight despite intense effort? It’s always fun to go to the ER with a serious, life-threatening complaint and get a condescending lecture by a prejudiced, thinness-fetishizing doc who assumes that the patient couldn’t possibly have a real problem and squanders the visit on a diatribe about cutting out the soda. It’s even more fun when these oft-misdiagnosed patients go home to suffer unnecessarily compounded morbidity and mortality, when skinny peers who present with the same complaint actually get adequate treatment.
Sherer goes so far as to say, “Let’s be honest: Most people, if left to their own preferences, would rather sit on the couch and eat potato chips than eat and act as they know they should […] ditch the refined sugar. Work out. Lose weight.” Yes, the main reason John Q. Public is in the hospital is because he knows better but is too lazy to actually do anything. Give this doctor a Nobel Prize! Meanwhile, a Foundations in Medicine professor somewhere out there weeps.
Let me put it this way: the facile, reductive explanation of simply blaming the patient is not practicing medicine; it is practicing prejudice and its corollary, discrimination. Curious that the author feels comfortable disseminating this to a wide audience, but perhaps this doctor’s openly shared attitude can serve to inform us as to the type of doctor we *never* want to have anywhere near our bodies if we can help it. So in that, this tome is perhaps an unintentional yet embarrassing win. Three ironic stars for that.
Check out the book from the library for the hearty reference section, save the links, and continue to educate yourself with books by healthcare professionals who can either stay focused or who understand the whole system, not just the curious microcosm of the hospital.
First, he employs inaccurate terminology without also providing the accurate corollary (“Obamacare” instead of the correct ACA) and has incorrect statistics (p. 317: “the 10 billion or so people living on our planet”); as of the book’s writing there were less than 8 billion people…author is off by a good 2 billion. Yikes.
Sherer inserts his own personal argument that universal healthcare is not a workable solution and questions citizens’ right to healthcare by using birds flying and fish swimming as analogies…or maybe it’s something about fish flying and birds swimming. Either way, we didn’t come here for this—this is in no way part of what readers are seeking in a so-called “Hospital Survival Guide”. Might be less concerning if in the same pages the doctor didn’t continue to blame patients for their own ill health: (p. 326 “Will people start taking better care of themselves? Knowing human nature […] I think not”); his speculation—and that’s all it is, speculation—is completely divorced from sociocultural reality.
No mention at all of forces that conspire against the body such as food deserts, lack of mass transit, capitalist work hours, racism, etc? Or about women who have conditions like thyroid imbalance or PCOS and struggle to maintain their weight despite intense effort? It’s always fun to go to the ER with a serious, life-threatening complaint and get a condescending lecture by a prejudiced, thinness-fetishizing doc who assumes that the patient couldn’t possibly have a real problem and squanders the visit on a diatribe about cutting out the soda. It’s even more fun when these oft-misdiagnosed patients go home to suffer unnecessarily compounded morbidity and mortality, when skinny peers who present with the same complaint actually get adequate treatment.
Sherer goes so far as to say, “Let’s be honest: Most people, if left to their own preferences, would rather sit on the couch and eat potato chips than eat and act as they know they should […] ditch the refined sugar. Work out. Lose weight.” Yes, the main reason John Q. Public is in the hospital is because he knows better but is too lazy to actually do anything. Give this doctor a Nobel Prize! Meanwhile, a Foundations in Medicine professor somewhere out there weeps.
Let me put it this way: the facile, reductive explanation of simply blaming the patient is not practicing medicine; it is practicing prejudice and its corollary, discrimination. Curious that the author feels comfortable disseminating this to a wide audience, but perhaps this doctor’s openly shared attitude can serve to inform us as to the type of doctor we *never* want to have anywhere near our bodies if we can help it. So in that, this tome is perhaps an unintentional yet embarrassing win. Three ironic stars for that.
Check out the book from the library for the hearty reference section, save the links, and continue to educate yourself with books by healthcare professionals who can either stay focused or who understand the whole system, not just the curious microcosm of the hospital.
May 15, 2021
One of the best books on the medical field regarding hospitals. I learned so much about what to do and so many times that I have gone to urgent care and seeing the doctors without a plan.
My main three takeaways are
1. Have a letter (in a colored envelope)to give to your doctor when you are taken to a hospital ER with with all of your medical history including allergies, medication and surgeries and any supplements you taking.
2. Take a tour of the hospital if you having surgery in that hospital. Look for a room while your touring that is away from noise and hustle and bustle. If possible try to get a private room if you staying for a few days.
3. Insurance -the most important thing in getting it right. Get approval before the surgery and if taken to the ER have your partner call the insurance and inform them of where and when you were taken to the ER . Goes without saying, document every conversation with the insurance-name, title , time and confirm approval. Have a paper trail in case they do not pay for medical bills which happens more often then people realize.
I highly recommend this book in fact I have in my car and if I have to go to the hospital, I will have in handy to review making sure I get it right.
My main three takeaways are
1. Have a letter (in a colored envelope)to give to your doctor when you are taken to a hospital ER with with all of your medical history including allergies, medication and surgeries and any supplements you taking.
2. Take a tour of the hospital if you having surgery in that hospital. Look for a room while your touring that is away from noise and hustle and bustle. If possible try to get a private room if you staying for a few days.
3. Insurance -the most important thing in getting it right. Get approval before the surgery and if taken to the ER have your partner call the insurance and inform them of where and when you were taken to the ER . Goes without saying, document every conversation with the insurance-name, title , time and confirm approval. Have a paper trail in case they do not pay for medical bills which happens more often then people realize.
I highly recommend this book in fact I have in my car and if I have to go to the hospital, I will have in handy to review making sure I get it right.
January 2, 2025
Hospital Survival Guide is a comprehensive patient guide to navigating the American hospital system. Due to what I can only describe as an overwhelming amount of information, I don't recommend trying to read the book in a short timespan but I do think it is a book worth reading. It gives alot of practical advice with each chapter being divided into advice sub-topics that cover specific points of reference. The book also contains a list of helpful websites, a glossary, and an index. As the back cover states, "hospital errors are the third-leading cause of death in the U.S." This book, written by a member of the medical community, provides a way to educate ourselves in the hope of avoiding being a part of that statistic.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews