Closing Death’s Door explores ways to improve patient safety and reduce iatrogenic injury when neither the healthcare industry itself nor the legal system has made a substantial dent in the problem. After reviewing evidence of the problem, the book explores innovative ways the law might more effectively bring about improvements in patient safety, such as by facilitating systems approaches in healthcare and correcting perverse incentives that prevent investment in safety. The series of ideas the authors present are intended to start a conversation that will lead to new legal policies that can help lower the risk of harm to patients.

An insider’s guide to searching online, communicating with your physician, and maximizing your health from a doctor who works at Google.
We’ve all been there. Late at night, staring into the glow of a phone trying to make sense of some health-related issue that we know nothing about. In Searching for Health, Dr. Kapil Parakh, with Anna Dirksen, brings to life knowledge he gained from working at Google and practicing medicine. Helping readers avoid common pitfalls, get the information they need, and partner effectively with their health team to figure out a path to good health together, the book distills decades of scientific research into a set of easy-to-follow tips.

Free resources can be found on their website: www.searchingforhealth.org. 

No matter whether you are a clinician, support professional, patient, survivor or advocate, Advocacy Heals U will reach you in ways you will not expect, which is why this book has seven pages of endorsements. Every person will go through an Event that will leave them stunned; the Need becomes apparent; the Advocacy will lead to strength and healing!

Donna Helen Crisp, a nurse ethicist, went into surgery expecting to go home the next morning.  Because of multiple medical errors, she spent weeks in a coma on an ICU ventilator and underwent four additional surgeries. When the hospital refused to comment, she spent years searching for – and finding – the truth of what happened to her.  As a nurse, teacher, lawyer, and patient, Crisp wrote Anatomy of Medical Errors: The Patient in Room 2 to give voice to a national conversation about improving medical care in hospitals.

Fox, a lawyer specializing in medical malpractice, and Landon, a pediatrician, deliver a practical and straightforward guide intended to help patients avoid becoming victims of the healthcare system. Starting with tips on selecting a competent doctor and verifying credentials, Fox and Landon methodically take readers through their rules for receiving quality care.

A well-written study of one person’s experience at the hands of the most exalted research hospital in our country. Big healthcare brands don’t mean that you will get the most expert care or humane treatment.

1/3 of all patients are accidentally harmed by hospital care. Author, Karen Curtiss, learned this the hard way — “If I’d had Safe & Sound in the Hospital, my dad would be alive today.” With quick checklists, simple forms and clever pull-out tools, you will know how to help get safe & sound hospital care for the people you love. Make sure everyone in your family has a copy! (It’s a better gift than flowers for someone in the hospital, too!)

The Story: Every day in the United States an estimated 550 people die from preventable medical errors, which is approximately 200,000 people a year, making it the 3rd leading cause of death in the United States (Healthgrades 2004). On April 14, my mom, Louise Batz, went to have knee replacement surgery. That night, a medical error caused Mom to sustain an injury from which she could not recover. She lost her life eleven days later. The Mission: The mission of the Louise H. Batz Patient Safety Foundation is to help prevent medical errors by ensuring that patients and families have the knowledge they need to promote a safe hospital experience for their loved ones and to support innovative advancements in patient safety.

The book provides hundreds of easy-to-follow action steps regarding medical care to keep the public safe and protected.

Brian Boyle tells a personal story of his fight back from near death after a horrific automobile accident. He focuses on his experience as a patient who, while in a two-month long medically induced coma, was unable to move or talk to anyone around him, yet he was able to hear, see and feel pain. Brian slowly clawed his way back to the living and found the strength to live to tell his story in his acclaimed memoir, Iron Heart.

The Savvy Diabetic: A Survival Guide is a collection of tips, tools, and techniques, borne out of experiences and mistakes and lots of on-the-job learning. After 43 years as a Type 1 diabetic, Joanne Laufer Milo had successfully and deliberately avoided hospitals. She was suddenly confronted with her worst fears: an emergency appendectomy 3000 miles away from my home. She was terrified of losing the control of her diabetes which she had worked so hard to maintain. Five years later and several more hospitalizations and doctors’ appointments, as well as many experiences with travel and life, Laufer Milo wanted to share what she has learned, hoping her insights and experiences will help you to ~ Live well and in balance with diabetes ~ Survive the medical system as a person with diabetes ~ Feel validated in your feelings about this disease ~ Have more tools to help support someone you love who has diabetes ~ Smile and even laugh about your own experiences.

Patients need to know more of what healthcare workers know, so they can make informed choices. Accountability in healthcare would expose dangerous doctors, reward good performance, and force positive change nationally, using the power of the free market.

Your Patient Safety Survival Guide by Dr. Gretchen LeFever Watson shows us how to make hospitals and care facilities safer. This book provides key safety habits for people to recognize so they can be sure hospital staff use them during every patient encounter. It includes concrete steps and actual scripts patients and families can use to become more effective advocates for their own safety. The book also explains how addressing the most common safety problems will set the stage for tackling other issues, including healthcare’s role in the overuse of opiate painkillers and its related heroin epidemic.

This story evolved from a tragic accident involving a young man. Well, two tragedies actually. By society’s standards, he wasn’t very significant. He wasn’t famous; he wasn’t a political figure; he wasn’t a scholar. In fact, he never graduated from college. He didn’t have a lot of material possessions. He worked as a cook and server in the restaurant industry. In other words, this young man was just another ordinary person.