Advanced Parenting by Kelly Fradin

Author:Kelly Fradin [FRADIN, MD, KELLY]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2023-04-11T00:00:00+00:00

An Organized Approach

The next piece of optimizing your performance centers on how you are structuring your work. It’s not unusual for caregiving work to come unexpectedly and begin with a period of uncertainty. For example, James was a twelve-year-old boy in the care of his grandmother. He looked pale and seemed to be growing more slowly than his peers, so she brought him to the pediatrician. When his blood counts were found to be just one-third of the normal level, he was urgently admitted to the hospital. Testing showed that, despite having no abdominal pain and a good appetite, he had blood in his stool and wasn’t absorbing nutrients well. A gastroenterologist performed an endoscopy, which confirmed a diagnosis of inflammatory bowel disease. His grandmother left the hospital with new prescriptions, follow-up appointments with several providers, and a discharge summary in a big folder.

A few years later, James was thriving with his diagnosis and showed up for an intake with me as his new pediatrician. Grandmother handed over the same overflowing, taped-together folder with documentation from more than twenty appointments, insurance paperwork about medication approvals, some camp and school forms, and partial records of dozens of different prescriptions. The folder had all the essential information and some organization. While it was not navigable for me, the packet was working for her. During our discussion, when she would need to reference a detail, she could find what she needed after digging around for a few moments. But when she got up to leave, she dropped the folder, and hundreds of papers mixed up in a big pile on the floor. She almost cried—curating his records took time she didn’t have. While the folder strategy was not doing harm, it certainly was not helping.

My social worker and a hospital volunteer were able to help her. I printed out a one-page summary of James’s medications and current doctors with upcoming appointments, and we added a few other key records—a growth chart and vaccine summary. My social worker and the volunteer found a hole-puncher and an extra three-ring binder and organized his records—not perfectly, but enough so that a few duplicates could be tossed and the important records wouldn’t go missing. We hoped this new model would help the grandmother in the process of following up with multiple specialists, dealing with school accommodations, and insurance battles of medication, but she was mostly excited to leave the three-ring binder at home and not carry the whole pile to every visit.

Investing effort in an organizational plan will help maximize your efficiency and save you time in the long-term. Only you can know what works best for your family and the systems you interact with, but all caregiving parents should be sure to organize their medical information, their space, and their caregiving work. So, let’s break down all three.

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