Everything You Need to Know About Nursing Homes: The Family's Comprehensive Guide to Either Working with the Institution or Finding Care Alternatives [Paperback]

Charlotte Digregorio (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 27, 2005

As a caregiver to her mother for 16 years, the author, a professional writer, offers an exhaustive and authoritative work on institutionalizing a loved one and the alternatives to it. This book is based on the author's vast personal experience of spending unusually long hours daily at three nursing homes with her bedridden, comatose mother for nearly four and one-half years, until she took her back home for the final eight months of her life.

The book also deals with the advantages and disadvantages of care alternatives, such as caring for a bedridden or ambulatory person at home by oneself; the hiring of home help; adult day care; assisted living facilities; residential care facilties; foster homes; and hospice.

This book is authoritative because in her 16 years of caregiving, the author saw her mother through various stages of her illnesses, from a miraculous brain cancer recovery to an ironic head injury accident that led her mother into a coma and institutionalization.

The author, a relentless healthcare advocate, writes in a compassionate and realistic way with amazing anecdotes that humanize her experiences at every stage of her mother's illnesses. In addition, there are helpful checklists on selecting nursing homes and care alternatives, and sample letters to use in dealing with nursing home staff and all healthcare professionals. This book is recommended as a resource by the National Nursing Home Survey; Kentucky Initiative for Quality Nursing Home Standards; American Parkinson's Disease Association Iowa Information and Referral Center; and Texas Aging Network. Veteran's Today publication calls it: a complete, definitive instruction manual. Elder Home Finders praises it as: a truly definitive consumer's guide with special features, including checklists for elder care and housing options, enhanced with appendices and bibliography. It is recommended by Retirement Resources Guide.com, and further, Ultimate Health Guide.com calls it: an exhaustive and authoritative work. All Business, a Dun and Bradstreet Company, recommends it as a resource. As for libraries throughout the U.S., among others, these recommend it as a resource: the Pauline Hass Public Library in Wisconsin, the Pasadena Public Library in California, the City of Evanston Public Library in Illinois, the Burlington Public Library in Massachusetts, and the Downers Grove Public Library in Illinois. The Bellevue University Library recommends it as: a significant book.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Invaluable. Unique. Compassionate/realistic look at aging services. Model of advocacy for elderly/infirm at every level of healthcare system. -- Library News, March/April 2006, (Vol. 6)

A comprehensive consumer's guide to facilities and services. -- Pomona College Magazine, May 2005

Exhaustive, invaluable comsumer's guide . . .a model of advocacy for the elderly and disabled, and an eye-opener on the healthcare field. -- University of Chicago Magazine, 2005

Important information. Very useful for dealing with the elderly and end of life issues. -- Wanda Franz, Ph.D., President, National Right To Life

With Medicare/long-term care being important topics of discussion for our aging population, this book is a must have. -- Jan Nathan, Executive Director, The Independent Book Publishers Association

From the Publisher

This book is an invaluable consumer's guide. It provides thousands of tips, and instruction and advice on not only selecting a nursing home and alternatives to it, but on: understanding the nursing home bureaucracy; working with the institution to receive promised care & finding solutions to care problems; advocating for physical, speech, and occupational therapies; right-to-life and life support issues; mental /physical stimulation for elders; how to care for bedridden & ambulatory elders; long-term care insurance covering home care and care facilities; how families can cope with illness & death; and reforming the healthcare system, in general.

In addition, this book contains appendices on organizations and websites for elders & caregivers; healthcare/legal terminology; and useful books.

This is simply an outstanding, unique book for its firsthand information and insight. It's the only book you'll ever need on nursing homes. It's a book for all families and for professionals in healthcare and related fields who work with the ill and elderly.

Finally, this book is a real eye-opener not only into the aging services field, but into the healthcare field. A monumental work for its thoughtfulness, and a model of advocacy for the elderly and infirm at every level of the healthcare system.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 464 pages
• Publisher: Civetta Press (January 27, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 096233183X
• ISBN-13: 978-0962331831
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,912,899 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I am the author of four non-fiction books: Everything You Need to Know About Nursing Homes; You Can Be A Columnist; Beginners' Guide to Writing & Selling Quality Features; and Your Original Personal Ad.

The first three books have been adopted as supplemental texts at universities throughout the U.S., Canada, India, Pakistan, and Catalonia. They are sold in 38 countries, and are displayed in major metropolitan venues, such as the Chicago Cultural Center. These books have been reviewed, recommended, and praised by hundreds of reviewers, critics, librarians, and professors worldwide.

Two of my books have been Featured Selections of Writer's Digest Book Club. I am regularly interviewed by major
print, radio, and television organizations throughout the U.S. I have signed books at libraries, chain bookstores, and
university bookstores.

I was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize in poetry. I have been nominated and listed in "The International Authors and Writers Who's Who" in Cambridge, England and in the "Who's Who In Writers, Editors & Poets U.S./Canada."

My background includes positions as a feature editor and columnist at daily newspapers and as a magazine editor. I have been a public relations director for a non-profit organization. I was also self-employed as a communications/public relations/marketing consultant with 92 clients in 15 states.

I have won several awards for my poetry. I am an internationally-published haiku, senryu, tanka,
kyoka, free verse, and sestina poet. I am currently working on two books, one on the art of Japanese poetic forms and the other, a collection of my haiku and senryu.

My poetry has been translated into foreign languages, including Japanese, Turkish, French, Russian and Polish. I have done poetry readings at a variety of bookstores, libraries, art centers and galleries.

My poetry has been displayed at supermarkets, apparel and wine shops, banks, and on public transit. I've been interviewed on cable television about my poetry. I also hosted my own radio program, "Poetry Beat," on
public broadcasting.

My poetry has been featured on many library web sites, including Shreve Memorial Library in Louisiana and Cornell University's Mann Library.

In other professional areas, I have been on university faculties, teaching French, Italian, and Writing.

I regularly give special lectures and workshops on writing, publishing, publicity, and creativity to business and professional groups, and at writer's conferences, schools, universities, literary festivals, non-profit organizations, and to libraries.

There have been about 400 articles written about me in the media. I have served on the Boards of writers and publishers organizations.

I am currently Midwest Regional Coordinator of The Haiku Society of America. My educational background includes undergraduate and graduate degrees from Pomona College and The University of Chicago.

Be sure to follow my writer's blog, www.charlottedigregorio.wordpress.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A consumer's guide to dealing with the nursing home bureaucracy, July 5, 2005

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Everything You Need to Know About Nursing Homes: The Family's Comprehensive Guide to Either Working with the Institution or Finding Care Alternatives (Paperback)

In Everything You Need To Know About Nursing Homes: The Family's Comprehensive Guide To Either Working With The Institution Or Finding Care Alternatives, journalist, lecturer, teacher, and author Charlotte Digregorio provides a complete, truly definitive, 488-page instruction manual specifically designed for non-specialist general readers who find themselves having to deal with arranging for the care of an invalid elder. Charlotte was made aware of the need for a book like this when her own mother needed institutional care due to having lapsed into a coma. Everything You Need To Know About Nursing Homes is a consumer's guide to dealing with the nursing home bureaucracy, working with the institution to resolve care problems, advocating for an elder's therapies, right-to-life and life support issues, finding alternatives to nursing home placement, caring for a bedridden elder at home and so much more. Special features include a wealth of checklists for basic elder care, house options for the elderly, sample letters to health care personnel regarding care, a summary of effective communication to use with health care personnel. Enhanced with an index, as well as appendices listing organizations and website devoted to care options, a glossary of general halth care and legal terms, nursing abbreviations to aid in reading an elder's medical chart, and a bibliography for further study, Everything You Need To Know About Nursing Homes should be on the shelve of every community library and available to every family member charged with an elder care responsibility.

5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful primer on what to expect from Nursing Home Care -, October 26, 2011

By 

BeachTunes - See all my reviews

This review is from: Everything You Need to Know About Nursing Homes: The Family's Comprehensive Guide to Either Working with the Institution or Finding Care Alternatives (Paperback)

Though I unfortunately did not discover this book until after my mother's death from septic shock (from what I perceived to be negligence in a non-profit CCRC's nursing unit). Apparently our experiences with the underpaid (and under-appreciated)staff were similar to the author's encounters. This book documents the cultural shortcomings and financially rigged game which gets played against "private pay" clientele at many facilities. It also (fortunately) gives you a way to fight back and document your experiences. It is definitely a worthwhile read for anyone anticipating ever having to place a loved one who cannot communicate their needs in a nursing home.

Now, if we could just get "Family Councils" set up via social media for every nursing facility (so family members can compare notes without travel or duress) and cameras (with privacy waivers when needed) in resident's rooms we may be able to improve care while lowering costs. Bed sores cost SO MUCH to treat...and if you think the "private pay" folks get gamed, can you imagine what happens with the taxpayers?! If we want Medicare to last, we need to suck a lot of costs out of this equation, as so much of the money is WASTED now! Expensive but unaccountable care ... provided by serfs, who have no "career path" and little oversight to speak of. This is SUCH an interesting industry - barriers to entry (a/k/a Cert. Of Need)limit competition, passive clients w/ distracted family members are the target market, the payor is usually the government, and repetitive high $, monthly cash flows are a given. We need to start a consumer advocacy movement around this book!