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CHOOSING A NURSING HOME: Everything the Family and Patient Need to Know by Jean Baron Nassau

CHOOSING A NURSING HOME: Everything the Family and Patient Need to Know

By

Pub Date: March 1st, 1975
Publisher: Funk & Wagnalls

The author, a nursing home administrator for many years, has written a manual which answers all of the questions without considering the real problem to any degree (what to do with that continually increasing population which we are keeping barely alive longer). Her book is a model of efficiency -- explaining the right facility in terms of licensing, staff, plant, maintenance, etc., and the yardsticks by which you can gauge the quality of the meals, cleanliness, social services, etc. Miss Nassau considers both the ""skilled"" and ""intermediate care facility,"" itemizes what Medicare and Medicaid both require and provide. She also outlines what rehabilitative and restorative care can do -- if it is done. But advice such as ""If your patient is senile or aphasic. . . the more information and the more understanding that your doctor will give you by explaining the facts, the better able you will be to maintain a stable and still meaningful relationship"" seems wishful if not invalid. With our accelerating senile population, that ""meaningful relationship"" is only a moment of recognition at best in a long period of time. Thus the guidance is utilitarian, only up to a point.