You are not immune to the confusion and anxiety that comes with having a loved one in the hospital. You must become their advocate to help them get the best treatment possible. Critical Conditions offers you a comprehensive field guide for keeping your loved one safe during their hospitalization.

You will learn how to:

  Prevent deadly medical errors, medication mistakes,
     and the spread of infectious diseases.
  Reach doctors when you need them—every time.
  Prevent fatal falls.
  Create a "Family Advocate Team."
  Manage your loved one's care if you live out of town.
  Gather support for yourself and the patient.
  Research your loved one's illness or injury.
  Deal with cultural issues and language barriers.
  Monitor medications, diet, procedures, labs, and treatment.
  Navigate and manage the hospital system with confidence.
  Be proactive as you oversee your loved one's hospital care.
  Communicate with nurses and doctors to maximize medical attention for the patient.

…and much more.

When our loved ones are hospitalized with a medical crisis,
most of us don't know what to do.

We are overwhelmed and distraught over their medical crisis and stymied by the hospital system. We ask the wrong hospital staff for information. We can't understand why nurses don't respond to the call button and why doctors can't be reached. We don't comprehend medical language, and don't know which questions to ask and who to ask them of. We are alarmed by medication and procedural errors that place our loved ones in peril. On top of everything else, our loved one may catch a major infection in the hospital, threatening their recovery.

There is something you can do to help.

Critical Conditions: The Essential Hospital Guide
to Get Your Loved One Out Alive teaches you how.

Critical Conditions is a step-by-step guide and workbook that leads you from Admitting through to Discharge and offers concrete advice and tips gathered from over 150 interviews with doctors, nurses, hospital social workers, psychologists, family members, and other medical staff.

Given the number of preventable hospital deaths caused by medical errors (HealthGrades Fifth Annual 2008 study), the spread of hospital-acquired infectious diseases, and preventable fatal falls, someone—a family member—must be a sentinel to oversee and support medical care. No patient, when sick in the hospital, can do this for himself. You must do this for him.

Critical Conditions teaches you how.

Each and every interviewed RN and physician validated the need for this book. They all said, "You don't know how much this book is needed. Hospitals and doctors' offices should carry this book. Families have to be involved. Especially now. Hospitals are in crisis."

Critical Conditions is for anyone with
a family member or loved one in the hospital.

You don't need experience or a degree; all you need is the willingness to get involved in your loved one's hospital care and the desire to learn the hospital system through the information in this book.

If you don't have the time to act as your loved one's advocate, you can create a "Family Advocate Team," as explained in the book. This is a group of family members or friends who share the job of overseeing and supporting the patient's medical care. Each member of the Family Advocate Team will read this book and will take notes in the workbook section of the book.

You may need additional support and may not have family members or friends to act as members of a Family Advocate Team. You can hire a private duty nurse, "sitter," companion, babysitter or another form of domestic help. The goal is to have someone with your loved one. Give this support person Critical Conditions and ask them to read it. They will use the workbook portion and will serve as your eyes and ears when you are not present.