Prologue: Patient Care in Perspective

We are all patients, some of us all of the time.

Arthritis, pain, diabetes; menstrual, menopause or prostate problems; paraplegia, heart disease, the aftereffects of a stroke—these are all everyday conditions of some people, not just when they seek care.

Newborns, infants, children, and everyone, are injured some days, or are sick or just feel bad on others. Women are pregnant. People forget to take their medications or don’t remember whether they did or not. Patients—people who live life—must learn what to do when these problems and situations occur. Should they seek care or not? Can they afford to seek care?—Can they afford not to?

What can a person do today to avoid health complications later in life? What can a caregiver do? What can society do?

Patient care is as much an educational process of people in how to live their lives, than it is in alleviating or fixing acute or chronic problems. Patient care occurs all the time—Sometimes patients come in to be seen by caregivers.

For a caregiver, patient care is giving the patient exactly what the patient needs to stay healthy and to participate in life. And patient care is best if the patient is not dependent upon the caregiver, as each person needs to be in control of his or her own life.

It should always be up to the patient to determine when care is not to be given. This should include the patient’s right to get only the right pain medication without any other treatment. When the patient is unconscious or not lucid, advance directives or a durable power of attorney for healthcare should apply.

Caregiving is both common and uncommon—Everybody depends upon everyone else to survive in the world, but “We are all angels to the people who need us the most!”

Patient care is for everybody. Caregiving is for everybody to do, but angelic caregiving is for the privileged few in each of our lives.

This is a book about how to develop an automated patient medical record that could evolve into a universal patient record, and about how this automated patient medical record could be used to help patients and help the people caring for them.

And we are all patients, and all caregivers.

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Comments? mailto:Michael.McGuire@abac.com