The Smart Parent's Guide: Getting Your Kids Through Checkups, Illnesses, and Accidents - Softcover

Trachtenberg, Jennifer

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1439152918 ISBN 13: 9781439152911

Verlag: Free Press, 2010

Inhaltsangabe

What to Do When You Don’t Know What to Do!

"Moms and dads need expert guidelines, especially when it comes to their kids' health. This book reveals the inside strategies I use myself-I'm a parent, too!-to avoid critical, common blunders where it matters most: in the ER, pediatrics ward, all-night pharmacy, exam room, or any other medical hot spot for kids. These tips could save your child’s life one day. Even tomorrow." -Dr. Jen

Making health care decisions for your child can be overwhelming in this age of instant information. It's easy to feel like you know next to nothing or way too much. Either way, you may resort to guessing instead of making smart choices. That’s why the nation's leading health care oversight group, The Joint Commission, joined forces with Dr. Jennifer Trachtenberg on this book: to help you make the right decisions, whether you're dealing with a checkup or a full-blown crisis.

The Smart Parent's Guide will give you the information you need to manage the pediatric health care system. Dr. Jen understands the questions parents face—as a mom, she's faced them herself. She walks you through everything: from how to choose the best ER for kids (not adults) to when to give a kid medicine (or not to) to how pediatricians care for their own children (prepare to be surprised). Her goal is your goal: to protect the health of your children.

There simply is nothing more important.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Dr. Jennifer Trachtenberg, is a nationally-renowned parenting expert and board-certified pediatrician. She has practiced pediatric and adolescent medicine for more than 12 years and maintains a successful private practice in New York City. Author of Good Kids, Bad Habits:The RealAge Guide to Raising Healthy Children, Dr. Trachtenberg also serves as chief pediatric officer for RealAge.com. She earned her undergraduate degree in clinical nutrition, as well as her MD, from Cornell University.  She is also Assistant Clinical Professor in pediatrics at The Mount Sinai Medical Center, a Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics, and a mother of three young children.

As the heart and soul of the RealAge.com Parenting Center, Dr. Trachtenberg helps educate parents on how to raise healthy children through the RealAge Healthy Kids Test. The site offers a RealAge Parenting Style Quiz, and gives parents the opportunity to sign up for weekly tips and check the most recent and relevant medical news on child health. Dr. Trachtenberg has appeared on NBC’s The Today Show, AOL Coaches Homepage, iVillage Live, and CNN’s Headline News, among others. She has published articles on various health and parenting topics, including child development and childhood obesity.

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Introduction

As a pediatrician, I am the best buddy and confidante for the parents of my patients. Want to know one of the most common confessions I hear from parents? They’re scared. Sometimes terrified. From caring for a teeny-tiny newborn to coping with a child’s medical crisis, they’re afraid they’ll make a horrible mistake. Good parents like you want to do everything right for their kids.

But a little bit of fear is a good thing. It keeps you on your toes—it makes you question, focus, and think. When it comes to your kids’ health, being blissfully unaware can have devastating consequences. As a pediatrician and a mom of three, I’ve seen the good, the bad, and the very ugly on both sides of the stethoscope. I know the goofs that even ultra-intelligent parents can make and the mistakes that happen in even the best hospitals. Modern medicine can work wonders, but it can also do real harm, thanks to human errors and mechanical breakdowns.

That said, the last thing I want is to paralyze you with fear and worry. A much smarter strategy—one that I use myself and encourage you to use as well—is to use fear to your advantage. Treat being scared as a signal that you need to know more. The more you know, the smarter the decisions you’ll make about your children’s health. Yes, you’re right, there’s so much information out there that a person could drown in it. So what’s the best way to navigate this vast sea of new medical knowledge you’re blessed (and burdened) with?
Note
1 in 15 children in hospitals is injured by medical mistakes and adverse drug reactions.

That’s why I wrote this book: to give you my insider’s recommendations on how to protect your child’s health. Because that’s your most important mission as a parent.

Don’t feel compelled to read this book straight through. You’re a parent. You don’t have much extra time on your hands, do you? Take a spin through chapter 1 whenever you need to give your child a medication, even a simple fever reducer. Read chapters 2 and 3 so you know how to find the right pediatrician and how to keep your kids healthy. And read chapter 4 so that you’re prepared for the unexpected. Otherwise, open it when you start to feel that uneasy sense of fear creeping in but before you’re in a full-blown panic.

When it is your child’s turn to go to the hospital, you shouldn’t leave anything to chance. As a doctor, I’ve seen too many things go wrong from the start. You need to be more vigilant about your child’s care in the hospital than anywhere. And you’ll likely have to be at your best when you’re nearly at your wit’s end and would rather become a dumbfounded bystander.

It happens to thousands of parents every day.

But don’t let it happen to you.

I want to give you tips on how to hold it together and make things go right, because I have truly been there and done that. This book provides the inside strategies that I use to get good results and avoid critical, common blunders where it matters most—in the emergency department, pediatrics ward, all-night pharmacy, exam room, or any other medical hot spot where your child’s health can be on the line. While there are plenty of books loaded with children’s health advice—believe me, I own them all—none approaches health care quite like this field guide does. It will help you make the right decisions, whether you’re just trying to get the best care for your child during a routine office visit or you’re in the middle of a full-blown health crisis.
Note
If you live in the U.S., the odds that your child will be hospitalized this year are 1 in 25.

The great team behind this book will also help you. My coauthors include The Joint Commission—a not-for-profit organization that accredits and certifies more than seventeen thousand hospitals, health care organizations, and programs in the United States—and RealAge, a health company that provides some of the most useful free tests on the Internet, including its Healthy Kids Test. (I’m its chief pediatric officer.) Collaborating with these two organizations has yielded insights that you’ll find in no other book.

The experts at The Joint Commission impart wisdom that you’ll find invaluable (as I have) in choosing the best hospital for your child. (That’s a mission you should start right now, by the way; see page 166 to learn why.) The Joint Commission evaluates hospitals and other health care organizations to ensure that they meet top-quality standards in care, cleanliness, and procedures—and when hospitals fall short, it works to get them fixed. The Joint Commission strives to fulfill its vision that “all people always experience the safest, highest quality, best-value health care across all settings.”

You may know The Joint Commission by way of YOU: The Smart Patient, the bestseller that it produced with two lovable guys whom I’ll bet you’re familiar with: Michael Roizen, MD, and Mehmet Oz, MD. Known to millions as the “YOU Docs,” these physician-authors have changed countless lives through their books, TV appearances, and radio programs. They also wrote the foreword to this book. Thanks, guys!

As a parent, you work hard to teach your kids not to do certain risky things, from running with scissors to sending their e-mail address to a stranger. Moms and dads need expert guidelines too, especially when it comes to their kids’ health. This book will give you my rules for dealing with the medical system—the kinds of tips that could save your child’s life one day. Even tomorrow.

And remember, it’s okay to be a little scared. It’s the sure sign of a smart parent.

© 2010 Joint Commission Resources,

Chapter 2
How Do You Find Dr. Right?

How Smart Parents Locate Smart Pediatricians

POP QUIZ

Have you made a love connection with a pediatrician? or are you unhappy with your child’s doc? Or are you just starting to look for one? Take this quiz to find out if your search for a pediatrician is on the right track. If you can correctly answer the following questions (there may be more than one correct answer), feel free to skip to the next chapter. But if you miss a question or two, read on. (Answers can be found at the end of the chapter.)

1. When shopping for a pediatrician, what should you always ask the pediatrician’s office manager?

1. 
   How many children of other doctors does this pediatrician treat?
   
2. 
   Does this pediatrician hate middle-of-the-night calls from parents a little more or a little less than the average pediatrician?
   
3. 
   If this is a group practice, which doctor would the office manager call in an emergency?
   
4. 
   All of the above
   
5. 
   A and C
   

2. A parent who’s tempted to call an ambulance every time her child skins a knee would probably be best served by a pediatrician whose treatment style …

1. 
   Mirrors the parent’s, so each and every concern is examined and treated immediately
   
2. 
   Complements the parent’s by being more relaxed with a “watch and wait” approach
   

3. How long is too long to regularly wait in a pediatrician’s waiting room?

1. 
   Ten minutes
   
2. 
   Twenty to thirty minutes
   
3. 
   Forty-five minutes
   
4. 
   Until every parent and child who entered after you has been...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Free Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2010
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1439152918
• ISBN 13: 9781439152911
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 336
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV; info@simonandschuster.nl; ; Herculesplein 96; Utrecht; 3584 AA; Niederlande