Overview
The resource American Family Physician called "a valuable and convenient source of educational guides"
is back in an updated New Edition. All the most common diseases, conditions, and problems encountered in outpatient geriatric care are covered by 185 information sheets. Each sheet features an overview of the problem, important points of treatment, directions on when to contact a physician, and space for customized instructions. Plus, a bonus CD-ROM offers the instruction sheets in a handy electronic format!
• Improves compliance, calms concerns, and strengthens the doctor-patient relationship.
• Examines clinical conditions such as depression, heart failure, stroke, pneumonia, anemia as well as issues such as incontinence, falls, nutrition and diets, driving, end-of-life care, living wills, and much more.
• Addresses issues specific to caregivers and anticipates difficulties they encounter.
• Features perforated pages for ease of photocopying as well as customizable PDF versions of all 185 sheets on the bonus CD-ROM.
• Allows readers to add their own instructions with additional space provided on each printed topic sheet.
• Makes information easy to grasp with a large type size and a consistent, patient-friendly format.
• More than new 35 instructions that discusses SARS, PSA testing, macular degeneration, infections in diabetics, immunizations, and much more.
• Careful scrutiny and revision of all information sheets to ensure adherence to existing standards of care.
The book contains black-and-white illustrations.
Editorials
From The Critics
Reviewer: David O. Staats, MD(University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center)Description: This book provides a set of patient and caregiver information sheets for conditions and treatment affecting older persons. This is an updated version of the second edition, published in 1999, and contains revisions in a number of areas and adds 35 new topics, such as PSA screening and SARS.
Purpose: The purpose is to provide office-based medical practitioners easily reproduced sheets of patient information to give to patients. This is a worthy objective; the authors cover a wide range of conditions.
Audience: Although this book is intended for office-based practitioners, it is ultimately the patients and their caregivers for whom the information is intended.
Features: There are a wide variety of conditions addressed in this book. Medicolegal issues are also presented, as are various diagnostic tests. A really nice feature of this edition is the enclosure of a CD-ROM which can be used to reproduce the pages of the book. Practitioners can modify the text to add their own particular information — this adds to the versatility of the publication. There is a final section of anatomical charts and diagrams which are very clear and easy to understand.
Assessment: The breadth of this book is admirable; the depth is not. The information presented here is, in many cases, too simple to be of the value intended. For some of these topics, e.g. dementia, the Internet has web sites that go into elaborate detail on the condition and its care that a single sheet of paper (back and front) cannot hope to equal. If this book stimulates office physicians to develop patient education materials based on this book, it will have accomplished a lot.
David O. Staats
This book is a manual of information and instructions for patients and their caregivers about common illness and conditions faced by older persons. The purpose is to provide physicians information sheets they can give to their patients to supplement or reinforce discussions in the doctor's office. The audience is physicians treating older patients, the older patients themselves, and their caregivers. The large type here is just right for older persons to read. This edition comes with a CD-ROM to use in reproducing and modifying information to fit each practitioner's office. The instructions for patients provided here are superficial and often do not help practitioners or caregivers assess the most salient aspects of a given illness or condition. Some of the therapeutics discussed are out of date and no longer used. Therefore, this work is of little utility.2 Stars from Doody