Product Description

This comprehensive home reference guide addresses a wide range of health concerns - as only a nurse who knows the inside story on health care can. From headaches to ankle sprains, asthma to zinc remedies, this authoritative resource reveals what everyone needs to know in order to get healthy - and stay that way.

Included are hundreds of insider tips on easing symptoms, promoting healing, following a treatment plan, and solving both the big and small problems that arise when someone is sick, hurt, or in pain.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #274390 in Books
• Published on: 2004-06-01
• Released on: 2004-06-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

From Publishers Weekly
In this useful home healthcare guide, Carroll offers the insight of a nurse to help readers understand and treat common medical conditions such as skin rashes and joint pains. Rather than following the general practice of organizing a self-care guide around specific diagnoses-which, she argues, makes such guides "hard to use unless you can diagnose yourself correctly first"-she lists the topics by symptoms, starting with the most common medical complaint: headaches. She then works through topics like eye irritation, toothaches, constipation and dizziness. In each section, she explains what the symptoms look and feel like, answers FAQs and decisively informs readers when the symptoms might be serious enough to warrant a call to a healthcare pro or a trip to the emergency room. The book also includes information on dealing with injuries like sprains and cuts, choosing and using medications, fighting through the difficulties of the healthcare system and having surgery. Through it all, the tone is accessible, friendly and easy-to-understand-just as a one might hope a good nurse would be.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author
Pat Carroll, R.N., has more than 20 years of experience as a registered nurse, respiratory therapist, and ER nurse. She has appeared on news programs on NBC, FOX, CBS, and the WB, and is a regular contributor to the "Your Weekend" news program on Connecticut's ABC affiliate, WTNH. The author of The Surgical Nurse's Managed Care Manual, which one the American Journal of Nursing Book of the Year Award, she has written more than 125 professional articles, and is on the editorial boards of four professional nursing journals.

Customer Reviews

Impressive!
Ms. Carroll has done an incredible job of explaining medical conditions so they can be easily understood by the lay person. More than this, she describes common sense treatments that can be implemented at home, versus when the condition warrants a call to the health care provider. Signs and symptoms necessitating an immediate trip to the ER are also listed. The book begins with a terrific explanation of the differences between nursing practice and the practice of medicine that dispels the myth that nurses are the handmaidens of the physician. She uses the principles of sound nursing judgment in the advice she gives throughout the book. Many resources (including her own website) are listed for further information. Written in a warm, down to earth style, this is an invaluable book for lay persons, and a reference that nurses can recommend to others with confidence.

What Patients Should Know But Don't
As an attorney who deals with medical issues every day, I found Pat Carroll's book to be and excellent blend of science and common sense advice to patients and their families. Whether the subject is safety when traveling, immunizations, or how to get the most out of your relationship with your physician, the book dispenses excellent advice.
New mothers will find the book very helpful, and so will those who may lack formal education in health subjects. Like her advice not to clean out cuts with peroxide, the advice she dispenses often goes against "the way we've always done it," but it never goes against established medical and nursing science. Readers will learn many things they should know, but most likely do not.
This is a book that everyday consumers and patient educators will find priceless.

What Nurses Know
Outstanding - and I am a nurse. The advice is for any one who has a parent or is a parent and helps make sense out of the world of medicine. Physicians are overloaded and Ms. Carroll helps docs help patients. I wish physicians would give copies to their patients!