Personal Care Handbook

Chronic, long-term medical problems are one of life's serious challenges. As a mother of a child with the spinal condition Spina Bifida, author Gloria Lopez understands the importance of accurate medical records. Personal Care Handbook: Survival Beyond the Caregiver is her effort to help patients and caregivers organize medical information and daily care into one convenient record. Using simple layman's terms, Lopez demonstrates how to record day-to-day care and medical visits.

Providing accurate documentation can aid in a medical team's diagnosis and treatment plan and minimize medical errors, she points out. And it can help ensure continuity of care during a change of caregiver—or a patient's transition to adulthood. With this goal in mind, the handbook guides family and patients through a useful mix of forms, logs and questionnaires that aid in hiring and evaluating a caregiver, analyzing independent living facilities, examining transportation and medical equipment and documenting medical issues.

Throughout the handbook, Lopez provides common sense examples of ways to keep those with medical issues safe. For example, she points out that individuals with lifethreatening food allergies should create a food allergy card. She recommends including the same information in Spanish. Not a Spanish speaker? Look for English/Spanish food labels to find the correct words for “seafood,” “nuts,” and other ingredients, she advises. She also points out how large, zippered art cases work well for holding x-rays, which should always remain with the patients or caregiver.

The 8X11 format of the handbook is ideal for photocopying multiple forms. And although there are occasional grammatical errors in the text, the author's experienced approach to creating an individual's medical record is an important contribution to the needs of patients and caregivers both.

Also available as an ebook.

This thoughtfully organized workbook ensures that people dealing with physical and medical conditions will get the care they need.

Personal Care Handbook: Survival Beyond the Caregiver by Gloria Lopez is a workbook to give peace of mind to people with disabilities and their caregivers.

Lopez knows that at the heart of caregiving, there is love for the person under care. This book catalogs the daily details that are tangible examples of that love. Each section contains helpful forms to fill in regarding the medical histories, care supplies, and daily routines of people with special needs.

Having this information in one place is essential, particularly in case something happens to the primary caregiver and a temporary provider needs to take over. Transitioning caregivers can be stressful for all involved, but with Lopez’s help, children and adults with disabilities and medical conditions can maintain the care they need with little interruption.

The book invites both caregiver and the person receiving care to work together in the process as much as possible, empowering both. This partnership approach is one of the many ways the text demonstrates respect for people who need care, and teaches caregivers ways to show respect. Innovative suggestions, like making a video to demonstrate daily routines, are included.

Lopez draws upon personal experiences. Her son was born with spina bifida, and she has decades of professional experience working with children with disabilities and their families. She is familiar with everything that goes into daily care for people with physical and medical needs. Her work is diligent and thorough, natural and well thought-out.

Because Lopez’s experience extends beyond her own life, the volume is adaptable to a wide variety of conditions and living situations. She’s thought of everything, and the work will provide people the peace of mind they need to live life in safety and health.

The format is a straightforward workbook, with digital downloads available for a fee. While the format lends itself more to opportunities to fill in information rather than impart it, Lopez’s deep insight and care comes through in the details and careful thought put into organizing this comprehensive book.

Alongside forms, Lopez offers tips and guiding principles in brief introductory material, both for the book and for each section. Even her simple, direct instructions are full of dignity and love.

Personal Care Handbook ensures that people dealing with physical and medical conditions get the care they need when they transition to a new caregiver.

An experienced health care advocate shares a wealth of knowledge on the importance of developing and updating a personal medical dossier.

Lopez’s (My Personal Medical Journal, 2010, etc.) compassionate, supportive, and authoritative perspective stems from decades spent working with children with disabilities and their families. She’s a public speaker on medical documentation, and she’s also raising a son who has spina bifida; as a result, Lopez recognizes firsthand the importance of ensuring continuity of care by having one’s personal health care information written down, well organized, and readily accessible. Personally, she notes how much easier it was to use service agencies and state medical programs with proper preparation. This important book eases the burden of collating information with clear, concise instructions and numerous checklists. Perhaps most crucially, it offers forms on which one may enter health care specifics and update them; the author’s simple instructions take the sting and the tedium out of record-keeping. Lopez stresses the importance of keeping data in understandable lay terms. She also addresses how her process can empower those who always wanted to take charge of their (or an elderly loved one’s) health care data, but needed a launching point. Keeping information organized, Lopez says, can be simplified by using a three-ring binder with dividers, which should include medical forms, allergy alerts, caregiver guidelines, interview data, and items such as emergency contacts and daily medication charts. Most of the forms and procedures here are self-explanatory and created with simplicity and ease-of-reference in mind. But Lopez’s guidebook may also provide readers with a learning experience by helping them become more proactive and vigilant about their health care.

An indispensable tool, particularly for caregivers.