The Caregiver's Encyclopedia: A Compassionate Guide to Caring for Older Adults

by Muriel R. Gillick

Overview

An indispensable, comprehensive reference for family caregivers.

Caregivers hold the key to the health, well-being, and happiness of their aging relatives, partners, or friends. The Caregiver's Encyclopedia provides you with all of the information you need to take the best care of your loved one—from making major medical decisions to making sure you don't burn out.

Written by Muriel R. Gillick, MD, a geriatrician with more than 30 years' experience caring for older people, this book highlights the importance of understanding your friend's or family member's overall health. With compassion and expertise, this book will help you "think like a doctor." The content

• helps you navigate the health-care system
• shares important information about treating basic geriatric syndromes, including delirium, dementia, and falls
• teaches you about preventive care options
• enables you to manage medical decisions related to both acute and chronic conditions
• discusses what Medicare covers—and what it doesn't
• guides you through different approaches to care
• weighs the risks and benefits of hospital vs. home, nursing home, or hospice care
• provides a detailed list of medical supplies that you might want to keep on hand
• offers you additional resources and emotional support

Throughout, Gillick provides helpful information and concrete concepts that caregivers can put into practice today. Authoritative, comprehensive, holistic, and highly illustrated, The Caregiver's Encyclopedia will help you figure out how to be the best caregiver you can be.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781421433585
Publisher:	Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date:	02/11/2020
Series:	A Johns Hopkins Press Health Book
Pages:	400
Sales rank:	1,091,951
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.20(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Muriel R. Gillick, MD, a physician specializing in geriatrics and palliative care, is a professor in the Department of Population Medicine at Harvard Medical School. She is the author of The Denial of Aging: Perpetual Youth, Eternal Life, and Other Dangerous Fantasies and Old and Sick in America: The Journey through the Health Care System.

Table of Contents

Introduction. What This Book Is (and What It Is Not)
Part I. Underlying Health State
Chapter 1. Why Health State Matters
Chapter 2. Ingredients of the Underlying Health State
Chapter 3. Thinking like a Geriatrician: Geriatric Syndromes
Chapter 4. Determining Your Family Member's Health State
Part II. Going to the Doctor
Chapter 5. The Role of the Primary Care Physician
Chapter 6. What to Expect from Nurse Practitioners and Physician Assistants
Chapter 7. What to Expect from Nurses, Social Workers, and Therapists
Chapter 8. What to Expect from Medical Specialists
Chapter 9. What a Geriatric Assessment Is and When to Ask for One
Part III. Going to the Hospital
Chapter 10. The Perils of Hospitalization
Chapter 11. Choosing a Hospital
Chapter 12. Working with a Hospitalist
Chapter 13. The Technological Imperative
Chapter 14. Acute Care for the Elderly Units
Chapter 15. Hospital-Based Palliative Care
Part IV. Going to the Rehabilitation Facility
Chapter 16. Choosing a Rehab Facility
Chapter 17. How Rehab Runs
Chapter 18. Your Role in the Rehab
Chapter 19. Hospital-Lite—Another Role for Rehab
Chapter 20. Discharge Home
Part V. Chronic Care at Home
Chapter 21. Your Medical Bag
Chapter 22. High Blood Pressure
Chapter 23. High Cholesterol
Chapter 24. Arthritis
Chapter 25. Coronary Heart Disease
Chapter 26. Diabetes
Chapter 27. Chronic Kidney Disease
Chapter 28. Heart Failure
Chapter 29. Alzheimer's Disease and Other Dementias
Chapter 30. Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease
Chapter 31. Depression
Chapter 32. Prevention
Part VI. Acute Care at Home
Chapter 33. Chest Pain
Chapter 34. Shortness of Breath
Chapter 35. Cough
Chapter 36. Nausea and Vomiting
Chapter 37. Constipation
Chapter 38. Confusion
Chapter 39. Dizziness
Chapter 40. Bleeding
Chapter 41. Abdominal Pain
Chapter 42. Fever
Part VII. Care in the Nursing Home
Chapter 43. Choosing a Nursing Home
Chapter 44. Why You Will Still Be a Caregiver
Chapter 45. Medical Care in the Nursing Home
Chapter 46. Team Meetings in the Nursing Home
Part VIII. Getting Additional Help
Chapter 47. Choosing a Health Plan
Chapter 48. Paying for Health Care
Chapter 49. Planning for Future Medical Care
Chapter 50. Community Resources
Chapter 51. Home Hospice
Chapter 52. Involving the Rest of the Family
Chapter 53. Caregiver Support
Epilogue. Rest in Peace
Acknowledgments
Index

What People are Saying About This

Joseph G. Ouslander

While caring for my beloved mother during her last three years, I learned that teaching Geriatrics is a lot easier than being a caregiver. I wish I had had this book to help. Dr. Gillick has provided caregivers with a comprehensive resource that will be both understandable and useful.

Christine K. Cassel

"This book will be a godsend for the millions of people who are now caregivers and the many millions more who are entering this role in the years ahead. Covering a wide scope, it is indeed encyclopedic, but it is easy to find what you need and reads like an open conversation with a good friend who happens to know the questions you should ask and how to find the answers."

Carol Levine

"A knowledgeable, useful guide that will help caregivers navigate the complicated territory of medical care for their family member. An experienced physician who is well-versed in policy issues, Dr. Gillick has been a champion of family caregiving involvement."

From the Publisher

A knowledgeable, useful guide that will help caregivers navigate the complicated territory of medical care for their family member. An experienced physician who is well-versed in policy issues, Dr. Gillick has been a champion of family caregiving involvement.
—Carol Levine, Families and Health Care Project, United Hospital Fund, editor of Living in the Land of Limbo: Fiction and Poetry about Family Caregiving

While caring for my beloved mother during her last three years, I learned that teaching Geriatrics is a lot easier than being a caregiver. I wish I had had this book to help. Dr. Gillick has provided caregivers with a comprehensive resource that will be both understandable and useful.
—Joseph G. Ouslander, MD, Florida Atlantic University, coauthor of Essentials of Clinical Geriatrics

Dr. Gillick offers a great resource for millions of dedicated caregivers. She displays a rare ability to translate medical lingo into useful advice for those who care for aging family members. This book offers both a big picture and specific tools to help people be the best caregivers they can be.
—Eric De Jonge, MD, President, American Academy of Home Care Medicine

This book will be a godsend for the millions of people who are now caregivers and the many millions more who are entering this role in the years ahead. Covering a wide scope, it is indeed encyclopedic, but it is easy to find what you need and reads like an open conversation with a good friend who happens to know the questions you should ask and how to find the answers.
—Christine K. Cassel, MD, University of California San Francisco, author of The Practical Guide to Aging: What Everyone Needs to Know

Muriel Gillick has long been a brilliant thought leader in the field of geriatrics. In reassuring, user-friendly prose, she has taken a brilliant approach to the challenge of looking after a beloved elder and arranging for their medical care in the final decade or two of life. This is the book that family caregivers have been waiting for.
—Katy Butler, former family caregiver and bestselling author of The Art of Dying Well: A Practical Guide to a Good End of Life

Katy Butler

Muriel Gillick has long been a brilliant thought leader in the field of geriatrics. In reassuring, user-friendly prose, she has taken a brilliant approach to the challenge of looking after a beloved elder and arranging for their medical care in the final decade or two of life. This is the book that family caregivers have been waiting for.

Eric De Jonge

Dr. Gillick offers a great resource for millions of dedicated caregivers. She displays a rare ability to translate medical lingo into useful advice for those who care for aging family members. This book offers both a big picture and specific tools to help people be the best caregivers they can be.

Editorial Reviews

Reviewer: Wendy Boren, RN, BSN (University of Missouri)
Description: This is an all-in-one guidebook for caregivers of the elderly in a home-based setting. The book covers the difficulties of changing roles from child or friend into caregiver and what that means physically, emotionally, and medically. By addressing basic caregiver roles and questions in a variety of settings, this book serves as a strong guide for giving care in a productive, honest, and strategic way. It addresses common illnesses, hospital and skilled nursing admissions, polypharmacy, ADLs, and cognition. Replications of common geriatric tests and tables help the readers understand the types of assessments their loved ones may experience, as well as scales used to determine safety and ability.
Purpose: The purpose is to present gentle guidelines for caregivers of the elderly in the United States. The book focuses on common ailments such as arthritis and COPD and discusses medical management for flareups and acute changes to chronic problems. It also teaches caregivers the basic ins and outs of navigating Medicare. Finally, it leads readers through caregiving roles throughout the healthcare continuum, first focusing on hospitalizations, followed by rehabilitation units, then skilled nursing and home health. The book meets its objectives head on and provides an easy-to-understand, comprehensive guide for caregivers.
Audience: The book is written for general laypersons without medical knowledge. It is a useful checklist for caregivers navigating the world after age 65. The author is a recognized geriatric physician who meets the needs of this audience. Her years of experience as a practitioner lend credibility to not only the medical science of her treatment solutions but also her practical solutions for life in the real world of caregiving at home.
Features: This is the book for all those new to the caregiver role who do not have a medical background in geriatrics. Becoming a caregiver is a life-changing event for everyone involved but luckily, this book offers a guide of brief explanations, common solutions, and basic assessment tools, brought together in an around-the-coffee-table conversation style that is all but lost in health care these days. Subjects are divided into chapters that make the book easy to navigate and follow a timetable from illness and acuity assessment to planning for the chronic and long term. Tables, graphs, and screenshots of webpages make it very simple for those without medical mindsets to follow along and begin their journeys as caregivers well informed and with fewer stumbling blocks. The information boxes that follow the medical chapters highlight key pieces of information caregivers should be aware of until/if further assistance becomes available. The book is organized, concise, and easy to follow. Additional resources would be appreciated, but otherwise it is spot on.
Assessment: Anyone who has ever cared for an older person has often wished for a how-to book - how-to navigate Medicare, what to expect from a nursing home, where to go for medical equipment, etc. Until this book there has been very little published that is practical, precise, and written directly to the caregiver about issues they really need to know. Its key medical points are invaluable for those without a medical background. The discussions of long-term medical goals and the pros and cons of hospital admission are helpful and accurate for caregivers to read. Without hesitation, I will recommend this book to be used as a guide and repeat reference by new caregivers as they face the various issues and impacts of what it means to be a caregiver in 2020.

Doody's Review Service

An invaluable resource . . . Gillick knows the system inside and out and is brilliant at making complex systems easy to understand. If you've read her other books (which I recommend you do) you'll recognize her narrative style, which reads like advice from a caring and well-informed friend.

The Caregiver Space

An invaluable resource . . . Gillick knows the system inside and out and is brilliant at making complex systems easy to understand. If you've read her other books (which I recommend you do) you'll recognize her narrative style, which reads like advice from a caring and well-informed friend.
—The Caregiver Space

From the Publisher