The Empowered Patient: Hundreds of Life-Saving Facts, Action Steps and Strategies You Need to Know (Paperback)

~ Dr. Julia A. Hallisy (Author) "Of all the millions of people who interact with our health care system every year, only a fraction is even vaguely aware of the number..." (more)
Key Phrases: charge nurse, patient relations department, infection control specialist, Action Steps, Joint Commission, Bill of Rights (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

Teaching patients how to empower themselves is a tough sell until they have been challenged by the existing system. But once burned, twice or forever shy--and this book can help patients get beyond that shyness.
Hallisy spent 11 years fighting the American healthcare system on behalf of her daughter who was born with bilateral retinoblastoma, a form of cancer. Few patients learn how to navigate the system as extensively and successfully as a parent with a very sick or debilitated child. Hallisy has turned her daughter's experience into a book that helps all patients.
What I most appreciate about her approach is that she makes us realize that the problems we run into are mostly based on time and/or communication. When communication breaks down, we patients must spend the time making up the difference. This book helps fill those gaps.
Further, there is no vague list of ideas here for patients. Each part of each chapter boils down to specific, actionable steps to make navigation through diagnosis and treatment much more successful for all parties. --Trisha Torrey, About.com: Patient Empowerment Forum, Feb 2008

The Empowered Patient is at once one of the most pragmatic and one of the most moving healthcare books that I have ever read.
Remarkably, The Empowered Patient is not an angry book. It is not maudlin. To her great credit, Hallisy manages to keep her tone matter-of-fact as she tells her reader what every patient and every patient's advocate needs to know about how to stay safe in a hospital.
Hallisy's 300-page book is eminently readable, and filled with enormously useful detail. This book is not an expose. But ultimately, The Empowered Patient frankly acknowledges that U.S. hospitals have become hectic, potentially dangerous places. And you do have a right to feel safe. As Hallisy puts it: "Your need to feel safe is not self-indulgent. You have a right to expect a reasonable degree of safety. In fact, where else should you expect to feel safer than in a hospital? -- Maggie Mahar, HealthBeat Blog, March 2008

Product Description

In today's healthcare system, patients and their loved ones must share the responsibility for ensuring that they receive safe medical care. Every healthcare system demands critical review and vigilance at every step, especially as a patient. The Empowered Patient focuses on current healthcare safety issues including infection, medical error, second opinions, informed consent, and misdiagnoses. The book provides hundreds of easy-to-follow action steps to keep the public safe and protected. Readers will learn where the risks are, what to look for when assessing quality and safety, and what to ask for - and how to say it - with confidence and authority.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 351 pages
• Publisher: Bold Spirit Press; 1st edition (November 26, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0615177913
• ISBN-13: 978-0615177915
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #355,344 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Get the health care you deserve, July 4, 2008

By	Linda Bulger (Avon, Maine) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

It takes monumental effort to drive errors out of a system as complex as a U.S. hospital. With all the science and technology, with all the regulations, with all the commitment and good will in the world, mistakes happen. Dr. Julia Hallisy's book is the consumer guide you need to improve your outcome when you need care in a hospital. The Empowered Patient: Hundreds of Life-Saving Facts, Action Steps and Strategies You Need to Know is chock full of practical advice on how to be a patient or a patient advocate.

Some of the crucial topics in this book: how to make sure that the doctor directing your care is experienced; where the risk of infection lurks and how to avoid it; the importance of a second opinion; how to lodge an effective complaint. We've all heard of surgery being performed on the wrong body part, but are you aware that there are about one hundred operating room fires reported every year? Have you thought of the sometimes-fatal difference between .01 milligram and 0.1 milligram of a powerful drug? Do you know whether your local hospital bar-codes drugs and patients for a bedside accuracy check? Do you check and double check that your drug allergies are prominently displayed in your record?

I've worked in the health care field for thirty years, in hospitals committed to excellence. All of Dr. Hallisy's terrible possibilities are the focus of close scrutiny and constant system improvement but as a daughter, wife, parent I've seen how mistakes can happen. You may find some of her suggestions to be over-zealous but I can assure you that as a "patient advocate" I've read charts, inspected pills, disinfected surfaces, suggested hand-washing, left notes, asked for supervisors, leap-frogged the hierarchy, gowned up to observe invasive procedures, checked machine settings -- and never been criticized for it. I've made myself part of the team. Members of my family say I'm lucky to know what to look for, but if they read this book they'd know too.

Dr. Hallisy's daughter was diagnosed with bilateral eye cancer and the family spent ten years learning the painful lessons shared so effectively in this book. The Empowered Patient is by no means a bitter criticism of hospitals -- it's a practical guide. The days are gone when you can give yourself over gratefully to a benevolent, unified health care system. Unless you are incredibly lucky, you WILL use the information so eloquently presented in this book.

Linda Bulger, 2008

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars You MUST have this on your bookshelf, no matter who you are, June 18, 2008

By	Joanna Daneman (Middletown, DE USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)

If you or a family member or loved friend is facing hospitalization or any invasive medical procedure, you MUST HAVE THIS BOOK to hand. I mean it. The book advertises "hundreds of live-saving facts, actions steps and strategies" but it is much more. It covers everything from who might actually do your surgery (not the doctor you discussed it with, if you sign a general consent form that says "and associates") to how to ask for handwashing and skin disinfectant when getting IV lines (which account for up to 48% of hospital infection incidents.) Even how to monitor how the floor is being washed (dirty water and mop from room to room?) to talking to the nurse manager in charge to how to obtain your records. Simple things such as prophylatic procedures (wiping skin with alcohol, washing hands AND double-gloves, care of ventilators to avoid VAP or ventilator-associated pneumonia) are covered in detail.

This book will open your eyes. I had a friend mention to me that NO ONE should be in the hospital without a friend or family member there 24/7 (and the hospital staff will make sleeping arrangements for the patient-advocate.) If you face the uncomfortable situation of being in the hospital yourself or attending a loved one who is there, you should be familiar ALREADY with this book and have it by your side. Review it frequently. If you don't know how important it is to advocate for your loved one, this will teach you how. I've actually only been in hospital once, myself, as a child, so despite working at a hospital as a teen, I had no idea of how to advocate for myself or for others. This is an eye-opener and a very educational reference book.

ABSOLUTELY a MUST. Read it. Know it. Review it.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Every adult American should read this book, August 5, 2008

By	Charles Ashbacher "([e-mail])" (Marion, Iowa United States([e-mail])) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)

This is a book that every American should read, for it may just save your life or avoid a lightening of your wallet. However, to be effective, you must first firmly believe the following conditions:

*) Medical personnel are not infallible.
*) You can take control of your medical care and make the correct decisions, even when they contradict the opinion of a medical person.

This book had a positive affect on my life. While I was reading it, my mother suffered from a lengthy respiratory illness. After approximately two weeks, she went to a walk-in medical clinic and the person in charge, a physician's assistant, sent her to the emergency room. She arrived at 5:30 PM and when I got there at 9:30 PM she was lying on her back in a room. The doctor came in and said the tests indicated that she had some kind of infection and that they were going to admit her overnight. The doctor said that they could not differentiate between whether it was viral or bacterial in origin.
The next day when I went to visit I was told once again that the tests indicated an infection but there was no strong indicator as to the cause. With nothing else to go on, they recommended a spinal tap. In a somewhat tense conversation I explicitly asked if there was any result so far that even hinted at a need for a spinal tap. The answer that I finally forced out was that there was nothing to indicate a spinal tap was needed and they just wanted to do it as another test.
I then asked about risk and the response was that there was a small one. I then turned to my mother and told her that she was a fool if she consented to a test with some risk when there was absolutely no result from any of the several previous tests that even hinted that such a procedure was needed. At that point she refused the test and shortly after that she requested that she be released. She was and she is doing fine.
In this book, Hallisy describes many other situations that presented a similar scenario and how the patient or other concerned person took charge of the situation. Like it or not, medicine is an uncertain profession and all of us know ourselves very well and are intelligent enough to make rational decisions about our care. However, to do that, as I stated before, you must first be willing to believe that you are capable of doing so and that the medical people may not be.