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Nursing and the American health care delivery system
BOOK REVIEWS
179
The author suggests that relatives may welcome the opportunity to help with last offices for the patient at home. Why not also for the one in hospital? Throughout the book there is a tendency to lose the old person as an individual and refer to ‘the elderly’ as a homogenous group, e.g. “the elderly population must be kept in touch with reality, given their spectacles and encouraged to read the newspaper” (p. 160). Such prescriptive care implies force and failure to discover old people’s individual needs and wishes. This is in direct conflict to the message which this book is trying to convey. In summary, my reaction to this little book is mixed. An undoubted improvement on the second edition, but a missed opportunity to encourage a widespread improvement in nursing practice. References
Batehup,L. (1982). Recovery from stroke. In Recoveryfrom Illness. J. Wilson-Barnett and M. Fordham (Eds). Wiley, Chichester. Kennedy, A. P. and Brocklehurst, J. C. (1982). The nursing management of patients with long-term indwelling catheters. J. adv. Nurs. 7, 411-418. Royal Marsden Hospital (1984). Manual of ClinicalNursing Policies and Procedures. Harper & Row, London.
SALLY J. REDFERN, B.Sc., PhD., R.G.N.
Nursing and the American Health Care Delivery System. Joellen Beck Watson Hawkins and Loretta Pierfedeici Higgins. Tiresias Press, New York (1985). Price $9.00.
Health care delivery in the United States has been among the top three largest business enterprises for some years. Without a national health scheme, the delivery of care presents a complex picture of public and private providers working within the framework of a capitalistic society ambivalent as to whether health care is a right or a privilege. Whereas many, if not most, developed and developing countries have either a national health service or national health insurance, the system in the U.S. remains a hodge podge of private insurance, national government involvement for selected groups and groups who receive very little health care. The poor, racial minorities and the rural population tend to receive inadequate health care. This book, written as a textbook for both undergraduate and graduate students in nursing, sets the stage with a discussion of general systems theory and its application to health care delivery. Using an introduction to the U.S. health care system, this book informs by placing the present within the context of the past while pushing the reader to ponder the future. Anyone interested in gaining basic knowledge of this system profits from reading this book. Surely by now everyone knows the importance of understanding the larger system in which we perform our professional activities. ANNE J. DAVIS, Ph.D.,
F.A.A.N.
179
The author suggests that relatives may welcome the opportunity to help with last offices for the patient at home. Why not also for the one in hospital? Throughout the book there is a tendency to lose the old person as an individual and refer to ‘the elderly’ as a homogenous group, e.g. “the elderly population must be kept in touch with reality, given their spectacles and encouraged to read the newspaper” (p. 160). Such prescriptive care implies force and failure to discover old people’s individual needs and wishes. This is in direct conflict to the message which this book is trying to convey. In summary, my reaction to this little book is mixed. An undoubted improvement on the second edition, but a missed opportunity to encourage a widespread improvement in nursing practice. References
Batehup,L. (1982). Recovery from stroke. In Recoveryfrom Illness. J. Wilson-Barnett and M. Fordham (Eds). Wiley, Chichester. Kennedy, A. P. and Brocklehurst, J. C. (1982). The nursing management of patients with long-term indwelling catheters. J. adv. Nurs. 7, 411-418. Royal Marsden Hospital (1984). Manual of ClinicalNursing Policies and Procedures. Harper & Row, London.
SALLY J. REDFERN, B.Sc., PhD., R.G.N.
Nursing and the American Health Care Delivery System. Joellen Beck Watson Hawkins and Loretta Pierfedeici Higgins. Tiresias Press, New York (1985). Price $9.00.
Health care delivery in the United States has been among the top three largest business enterprises for some years. Without a national health scheme, the delivery of care presents a complex picture of public and private providers working within the framework of a capitalistic society ambivalent as to whether health care is a right or a privilege. Whereas many, if not most, developed and developing countries have either a national health service or national health insurance, the system in the U.S. remains a hodge podge of private insurance, national government involvement for selected groups and groups who receive very little health care. The poor, racial minorities and the rural population tend to receive inadequate health care. This book, written as a textbook for both undergraduate and graduate students in nursing, sets the stage with a discussion of general systems theory and its application to health care delivery. Using an introduction to the U.S. health care system, this book informs by placing the present within the context of the past while pushing the reader to ponder the future. Anyone interested in gaining basic knowledge of this system profits from reading this book. Surely by now everyone knows the importance of understanding the larger system in which we perform our professional activities. ANNE J. DAVIS, Ph.D.,
F.A.A.N.