Even the most capable individuals are challenged when confronted with the complexity of the modern hospital experience. The Informed Patient is a guide and a workbook, divided into topical, focused sections with step-by-step instructions, insights, and tips to illustrate what patients and their families can expect during a hospital stay. Anyone who will experience a hospital stay-or friends or family who may be in charge of a patient's care-will find all the help and advice they could need in the detailed sections that cover every aspect of what they can expect.

Karen A. Friedman, MD, and Sara L. Merwin, MPH, offer hands-on advice about how patients, health care providers, and medical staff can work together to achieve good outcomes. Through anecdotes, tips, sidebars, and clinical scenario vignettes, The Informed Patient presents ways to enhance and optimize a hospital stay, from practical advice on obtaining the best care to dealing with the emotional experience of being in the hospital.

Preface
Acknowledgments
1. Why You Need This Book and How to Use This Book
2. The Changing Landscape of Medicine
3. The Emergency Department Experience
4. Getting Settled and Finding Your Way
5. Figuring Out the Care Team
6. Physicians of All Kinds
7. Lines, Ports, Drains, Tubes, and Catheters
8. Tests and Procedures in the Hospital
9. Nutrition in the Hospital
10. Protocols and Precautions
11. Intensive Care Units (ICUs)
12. Special Patient Populations
13. Elective Surgery
14. Unplanned Surgery
15. Discharge
16. Some Final Thoughts
Glossary
index

Karen A. Friedman, MD, is Vice Chair for Education, Residency Program Director, and Associate Professor of Medicine in the Department of Medicine at the Hofstra Northwell School of Medicine. Sara L. Merwin, MPH, is Director of Clinical Research and Assistant Professor of Research in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at Montefiore Medical Center/Albert Einstein College of Medicine.