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The Life and Afterlife of St. Elizabeth of Hungary: Testimony from her Canonization Hearings

This book is a study and translation of the testimony given by witnesses at the canonization hearings of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, who died in 1231 at age 24 in Marburg, Germany. In January 1233 and ... More

This book is a study and translation of the testimony given by witnesses at the canonization hearings of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, who died in 1231 at age 24 in Marburg, Germany. In January 1233 and again in January 1235, papal commissioners interviewed hundreds of people as witnesses to the healing miracles associated with Elizabeth’s shrine. What these witnesses said about their maladies and their cures provides an unusually clear window into the workings of a nascent saint cult within the context of rural Germany. When the commission convened for the second time, it also heard from Elizabeth’s four closest associates, the so-called handmaids who had witnessed her transformation —under the guidance of her confessor Conrad of Marburg —from the powerful wife of the Thuringian landgrave (Ludwig IV) to a humble hospital worker in Marburg. Their statements, along with that of Conrad himself, allow for a better understanding of the effects of mendicant spirituality (normally associated with more urban environments) on a woman from the highest levels of German society.Less

Selling Our Souls: The Commodification of Hospital Care in the United States

Adam D. Reich

This book explores the contradictions inherent in one particular health care market—hospital care. Based on extensive interviews and observations across the three hospitals of one California city, ... More

This book explores the contradictions inherent in one particular health care market—hospital care. Based on extensive interviews and observations across the three hospitals of one California city, the book examines the tensions embedded in the market for hospital care, how different hospitals manage these tensions, the historical trajectories driving disparities in contemporary hospital practice, and the perils and possibilities of various models of care. The book's three featured hospitals could not be more different in background or contemporary practice. PubliCare Hospital was founded in the late nineteenth century as an almshouse in order to address the needs of the destitute. HolyCare Hospital was founded by an order of nuns in the mid-twentieth century, offering spiritual comfort to the paying patient. And GroupCare Hospital was founded in the late twentieth century to rationalize and economize care for middle-class patients and their employers. The book explains how these legacies play out today in terms of the hospitals' different responses to similar market pressures, and the varieties of care that result. The book is an in-depth investigation into how hospital organizations and the people who work in them make sense of and respond to the modern health care market.Less

Volunteers in hospice and palliative care: A resource for voluntary service managers

Rosalind Scott and Steven Howlett (eds)

This book provides practical guidelines on the responsibilities of those who lead, co-ordinate, and manage volunteers in small hospices, large specialist palliative care units, and in general ... More

This book provides practical guidelines on the responsibilities of those who lead, co-ordinate, and manage volunteers in small hospices, large specialist palliative care units, and in general hospitals with palliative care teams. Volunteers are key workers, who often perform difficult and important work. In the United Kingdom alone there are thousands of volunteers in hospice work, a small proportion doing work with patients, and the vast majority doing equally valuable work such as driving, sitting with relatives, and manning charity shops and telephones. As a result, Europe, Australia, the United States and Canada are very interested in the United Kingdom's use of volunteers. Aimed primarily at Voluntary Services Managers in small hospices, large specialist palliative care units, and in general hospitals with palliative care teams, this updated second edition covers volunteer selection, training, supervision and support, and legal and ethical considerations.Less

Care for the Dying: A Pathway to Excellence

John Ellershaw and Susie Wilkinson (eds)

Even for the most experienced healthcare professional, managing the last few days of life can be difficult. This book provides guidelines for the care of the dying based on the Liverpool Integrated ... More

Even for the most experienced healthcare professional, managing the last few days of life can be difficult. This book provides guidelines for the care of the dying based on the Liverpool Integrated Care Pathway for the Dying Patient (LCP). Developed at a hospice, the information can be disseminated and adapted to fit different settings such as hospitals and nursing homes. The LCP is a multiprofessional document that incorporates evidence-based practice and appropriate guidelines related to care of the dying. It provides a template that describes the process of care, which is generally delivered in a clinical situation and incorporates the expected outcome of care delivery. The LCP replaces all other documentation in this phase of care. Care pathways can provide a potentially powerful aid to professionals involved in palliative care. Basic principles of treatment are translated into daily practice, including bedside documentation systems, policies and procedures, standards of practice, continuing education, and quality improvement programmes. The book also includes chapters on symptom control, ethical issues, communication skills, and spiritual care.Less

Care of the Dying: A pathway to excellence

John Ellershaw and Susie Wilkinson (eds)

Even for the most experienced healthcare professional, managing the last few days of life can be difficult. This book provides guidelines for the care of the dying based on the Liverpool Care Pathway ... More

Even for the most experienced healthcare professional, managing the last few days of life can be difficult. This book provides guidelines for the care of the dying based on the Liverpool Care Pathway for the Dying Patient (LCP). Developed at a hospice, the information can be disseminated and adapted to fit different settings such as hospitals and nursing homes. The LCP is a multiprofessional document that incorporates evidence-based practice and appropriate guidelines related to care of the dying. It provides a template that describes the process of care which is generally delivered in a clinical situation and incorporates the expected outcome of care delivery. The LCP replaces all other documentation in this phase of care. Care pathways can provide a potentially powerful aid to professionals involved in palliative care. Basic principles of treatment are translated into daily practice, including bedside documentation systems, policies and procedures, standards of practice, continuing education, and quality-improvement programmes. This book includes chapters on symptom control, ethical issues, communication skills, and spiritual care, which underpin the use of the LCP.Less

Palliative care in the acute hospital setting: A practical guide

Sara Booth, Polly Edmonds, and Margaret Kendall

Hospital palliative care teams have been established in rapidly increasing numbers over the last twenty, as it has been recognised that hospices can never transfer the philosophy and practice of ... More

Hospital palliative care teams have been established in rapidly increasing numbers over the last twenty, as it has been recognised that hospices can never transfer the philosophy and practice of palliative care into the acute sector by simply existing; they often work as ‘stand alone units’ and remain outside mainstream medicine. However it has become apparent that improving access to palliative care for patients in acute hospitals is not as easy as employing external palliative care specialists as consultants. Even setting up a team of professionals who work solely in a hospital will often not improve the care of the great majority of patients being treated there. Based on the experience and knowledge of three clinicians in the area who have developed palliative care services in acute settings, this book provides those facing the same challenges with guidance and advice on a range of problems they might encounter. Using a problem focused and practical approach, this guide is filled with case-based problems to help with the identification of realistic, usable, everyday solutions. It also covers the skills and knowledge needed to help teams make progress in the hospital as well as outlining the best training to help professionals continue to flourish.Less

Cleaning Up: How Hospital Outsourcing Is Hurting Workers and Endangering Patients

Dan Zuberi

To cut costs and maximize profits, hospitals in the United States and many other countries are outsourcing such tasks as cleaning and food preparation to private contractors. To examine this ... More

To cut costs and maximize profits, hospitals in the United States and many other countries are outsourcing such tasks as cleaning and food preparation to private contractors. To examine this transformation in the healthcare industry, this book looks at the consequences of outsourcing from two perspectives: its impact on patient safety and its role in increasing socioeconomic inequality. The book argues that outsourcing has been disastrous for the cleanliness of hospitals—leading to an increased risk of hospital-acquired infections, a leading cause of severe illness and death—as well as for the effective delivery of other hospital services and the workers themselves. Interviews with the low-wage workers who keep hospitals running uncover claims of exposure to near-constant risk of injury and illness. Many report serious concerns about the quality of the work due to understaffing, high turnover, poor training and experience, inadequate cleaning supplies, and on-the-job injuries. The book also presents policy recommendations for improving patient safety by reducing the risk of hospital-acquired infection and ameliorating the work conditions and quality of life of hospital support workers. It makes the case that hospital outsourcing exemplifies the trend towards “low-road” service-sector jobs that threatens to undermine society's social health, as well as the physical health and well-being of patients in health care settings globally.Less

Parents of Poor Children in England 1580-1800

Patricia Crawford

This book studies the mothers and fathers of poor children in the England of the early modern and early industrial period. Although we know a good deal about the family life of monarchs in this ... More

This book studies the mothers and fathers of poor children in the England of the early modern and early industrial period. Although we know a good deal about the family life of monarchs in this period, much less is known about what life was like for poor single mothers, or for ordinary people who were trying to bring up their children. What were poor mothers and fathers trying to achieve, and what support did they have from their society, especially from the welfare system? This book attempts to answer these important questions, in order to illuminate the experience of parenting at this time from the perspective of the poor, a group who have naturally left little in the way of literary testimony. In doing this, it draws upon a wide range of archival material, including quarter session records, petitions for assistance, applications for places in the London Foundling Hospital, and evidence from criminal trials in London's Old Bailey. England in this period had a developing system of welfare, unique in Europe, by which parish rates were collected and administered to those deemed worthy of relief. The ‘civic fathers’ who administered this welfare drew upon a code of fatherhood framed in the Elizabethan period, by which a patriarch took responsibility for maintaining and exercising authority over wives and children. This code of family conduct was the product of a material world completely alien to that which the poor inhabited. Parents of the poor were different from those of middling and elite status. Poverty, not property, dictated their relationships with their children. Poor families were frequently broken by death. Fathers were frequently absent, and mothers had to rear their children with whatever forms of relief they could find.Less