Surviving Health Care: A Manual for Patients and Their Families

This book serves as a tool to help patients and families deal rationally with the perplexing and often irrational world of healthcare. It covers the topics and addresses the challenges that experts in a variety of healthcare fields believe to be the most vital to meeting the challenges of decision-making when people feel most vulnerable. With contributions from leading healthcare specialists, Surviving Health Care: A Manual for Patients and their Families examines a wide array of topics, including advance planning for healthcare, medical emergencies, genetic testing, pain management, and care of elders. It is a unique resource that aims above all to help patients reach their best healthcare decisions.

Thomasine Kushner is coeditor of the Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, and a bioethicist with the California Pacific Medical Center Program in Medicine and Human Values in San Francisco. She taught bioethics at the University of California, Berkeley for fifteen years and is the author (with David Thomasma) of Birth to Death: Science and Bioethics, Asking to Die: Inside the Dutch Debate about Euthanasia, and Ward Ethics: Dilemmas for Medical Students and Doctors in Training, along with several books on aesthetics and design.