I was thrilled to “meet” Tina Marrelli this past year through emails. She has always inspired me as a home health care nurse and as an author of the best books to guide us through the day-to-day caregiving and documentation. As anyone who has ever experienced home health care knows, the documentation is endless and just might kill you if you let it! Help is always appreciated!
Tina has managed to make home health and hospice make sense and encourage nurses to strive to improve their documentation as well as strive to provide the best quality patient-centered care for their home health and hospice patients.
A few months back, Tina sent me a couple more of her books and at the time I needed to find a safe place for them because we were doing some remodeling in our office to improve the air conditioning. Well as usual, that place was too safe because I couldn’t find them. Truth be told, I think my husband moved them after I placed them.
Last week I was looking for them and low an behold there they were in pain sight! I need to share with you. The Nurse Manager’s Survival Guide, 4th Ed is full of knowledge and advice and just plain good sense! Tina writes in such 
an easy to read fashion and tells it like it is. Management is NOT for everyone. It’s lonely at the “top” and if you’re in middle management, no one likes you and you won’t have many friends at work because it doesn’t work like that.
Marrelli gives you plenty of information to survive and thrive in the world of nurse management. And it’s good reading for those who are not in management as well. It’s always good to understand how things work on the other side of the fence or on mahogony row as it has often been described. If you can understand your manager from his/her viewpoint you might have a better chance at improving communication and finding common ground.
The book cavers all of the basics from A-Z such as the nurse manager’s role today, fundamentals of management, human resources, day-to-day operations, legal issues, team work, communication, effective time management, resource management and budgeting, supporting yourself and your team, and it covers a great subject “when bad things happen to good managers.” and finally there’s a fabulous chapter on figuring out what you want to do next, how to put together an effective CV or resume, how to market yourself and interview for your dream job. It also covers great topics such as negotiating an offer, writing a resignation, how to avoid burning bridges and training your successor.
It’s a Must-Have for your professional library!
The other great book from Ms. Marrelli is the Hospice & Palliative Care Handbook, Third Edition, Quality, Compliance and Reimbursement. Like her “Little Red Book” (Handbook of Home Health Standards) which has become the renowned standard handbook for home healthcare, this one guides hospice and palliative professionals through the definitions, overview and basics of palliative care and hospice. From there it drills right down to the core of diseases and applications of hospice and palliative care principles as well as what to expect from a variety of common disease
processes and how they qualify patients for palliative care and hospice.
This great book also covers the regs and conditions of participation and all that is required for quality, compliance and reimbursement. Documentation is once again a huge issue in hospice and palliative care and Tina provides great information and resources. She explores the day-to-day operations of planning, managing and coordinating the interdisciplinary team members in best practices and quality comfort care.
For any palliative or hospice care professional this is also a Must-Have for the library!
NOTE: Both the Handbook of Home Health Standards, 6th Edition and Hospice and Palliative Care Handbook, 3rd Edition were awarded 2nd place BOTY (Book of the Year) awards in their categories by AJN (American Journal of nursing.) Congrats Tina– so deserving!!!
UPDATE: If you’d lik
e to hear an interview with Tina about another great book she has written, A Guide for Caregiving: What’s Next? Planning for Safety, Quality, and Compassionate Care for Your Loved One and Yourself check out Caregiver.com. Read the review and the interview is near the bottom of the page.
