A brief but thorough introduction to the basics of in-home caregiving, addressing both practical and spiritual topics.
A manual for professionals, friends, and families responsible for the care of aging or disabled individuals.
In this debut health book, Davis draws on her decades of experience as a professional health aide, and years as the primary caregiver for relatives, to guide the reader through the basics of providing in-home care for adults. The book is divided into condition-specific chapters for easy reference, although much of the information applies to patients in all situations. Davis covers practical tips, including how to secure a bib at mealtime and the use of a slider board for moving a patient between a bed and a wheelchair, as well as harder-to-define topics, such as providing emotional support to patients and the particular challenges faced by those caring for people with dementia (“Be aware of clients’ body movements, actions, and the way they speak, as this is a clue to what is happening in their thoughts”). Davis shares anecdotes from her career as she explains why patients should never have access to the caregiver’s personal property or what may cause a patient to fall, and how the vagaries of aging and illness have an effect on the helper as well as on the patient. The book also addresses strategies for maintaining the caregiver’s physical and mental health in a stressful job, and concludes with a series of recommended meditations and affirmations. While the book could benefit from thorough proofreading (“fourty”; “People hate to admit that he or she need help”; “a Chaplin from hospice”), it offers valuable advice for those performing a challenging but necessary task, moving concisely through large amounts of information. Readers looking for a guide to both the spiritual and the practical sides of the caregiver’s role will find that Davis provides a solid introduction to the topic and a useful reference for everything from changing a patient’s clothes to adding fiber to the meals of reluctant eaters.
A brief but thorough introduction to the basics of in-home caregiving, addressing both practical and spiritual topics.Pub Date: Nov. 16, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5043-4299-5
Page Count: 110
Publisher: BalboaPress
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An intriguing approach to identifying and relating to one’s emotions.
An analysis of our emotions and the skills required to understand them.
We all have emotions, but how many of us have the vocabulary to accurately describe our experiences or to understand how our emotions affect the way we act? In this guide to help readers with their emotions, Brackett, the founding director of Yale University’s Center for Emotional Intelligence, presents a five-step method he calls R.U.L.E.R.: We need to recognize our emotions, understand what has caused them, be able to label them with precise terms and descriptions, know how to safely and effectively express them, and be able to regulate them in productive ways. The author walks readers through each step and provides an intriguing tool to use to help identify a specific emotion. Brackett introduces a four-square grid called a Mood Meter, which allows one to define where an emotion falls based on pleasantness and energy. He also uses four colors for each quadrant: yellow for high pleasantness and high energy, red for low pleasantness and high energy, green for high pleasantness and low energy, and blue for low pleasantness and low energy. The idea is to identify where an emotion lies in this grid in order to put the R.U.L.E.R. method to good use. The author’s research is wide-ranging, and his interweaving of his personal story with the data helps make the book less academic and more accessible to general readers. It’s particularly useful for parents and teachers who want to help children learn to handle difficult emotions so that they can thrive rather than be overwhelmed by them. The author’s system will also find use in the workplace. “Emotions are the most powerful force inside the workplace—as they are in every human endeavor,” writes Brackett. “They influence everything from leadership effectiveness to building and maintaining complex relationships, from innovation to customer relations.”
An intriguing approach to identifying and relating to one’s emotions.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-21284-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
A vivid sequel that strains credulity.
Fremont (After Long Silence, 1999) continues—and alters—her story of how memories of the Holocaust affected her family.
At the age of 44, the author learned that her father had disowned her, declaring her “predeceased”—or dead in his eyes—in his will. It was his final insult: Her parents had stopped speaking to her after she’d published After Long Silence, which exposed them as Jewish Holocaust survivors who had posed as Catholics in Europe and America in order to hide multilayered secrets. Here, Fremont delves further into her tortured family dynamics and shows how the rift developed. One thread centers on her life after her harrowing childhood: her education at Wellesley and Boston University, the loss of her virginity to a college boyfriend before accepting her lesbianism, her stint with the Peace Corps in Lesotho, and her decades of work as a lawyer in Boston. Another strand involves her fraught relationship with her sister, Lara, and how their difficulties relate to their father, a doctor embittered after years in the Siberian gulag; and their mother, deeply enmeshed with her own sister, Zosia, who had married an Italian count and stayed in Rome to raise a child. Fremont tells these stories with novelistic flair, ending with a surprising theory about why her parents hid their Judaism. Yet she often appears insensitive to the serious problems she says Lara once faced, including suicidal depression. “The whole point of suicide, I thought, was to succeed at it,” she writes. “My sister’s completion rate was pathetic.” Key facts also differ from those in her earlier work. After Long Silence says, for example, that the author grew up “in a small city in the Midwest” while she writes here that she grew up in “upstate New York,” changes Fremont says she made for “consistency” in the new book but that muddy its narrative waters. The discrepancies may not bother readers seeking psychological insights rather than factual accuracy, but others will wonder if this book should have been labeled a fictionalized autobiography rather than a memoir.
A vivid sequel that strains credulity.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-982113-60-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2019
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