Martine Ehrenclou author of Critical Conditions & John Villarreal of Villarreal Media

Author Martine Ehrenclou, MA, received a thorough education in hospitals with the extended hospitalizations of both her mother and godmother. Having spent the equivalent of a full year in three separate hospitals in different states, Martine was determined to find out if her family members' hospitalizations were the norm.

After interviewing fifty families, she found out that in fact they were the norm. Family members all reported feeling completely lost, overwhelmed and stymied by the hospital system. They couldn’t reach doctors when they needed them, nurses didn't respond to the call button, medication mistakes put their loved ones in peril, and infectious diseases delayed patients' recoveries, if in fact the patients made it out alive. Many were convinced that medical errors had killed their family members.

Alarmed by what she heard, Martine became extremely motivated to undertake further investigation of hospital patient care. She interviewed over eighty-five registered nurses who worked in hospitals, dozens of physicians, physician assistants, hospital social workers, psychologists, and other medical staff to find out what was going on in hospitals and why so many family members were distraught over their loved ones’ hospitalizations.

From all of the interviews and hundreds of hours of research, Martine realized that hospital care was in crisis. She set out to do something about it. She understood there was no way for her to fix hospital care, but knew that if she could educate family members and get them involved, patients would have safer hospital stays. Hence, the writing of her book, Critical Conditions: The Essential Hospital Guide To Get Your Loved One Out Alive.

Martine is a writer and public relations and marketing executive, with clients that include authors, psychologists, and entrepreneurs. As past owner of Love Letters Ink, she was interviewed as the "Contemporary Cyrano" by national TV talk and news shows (Phil Donahue, Jenny Jones, ABC World News Tonight, CNN, etc.), national magazines (Time Magazine, Inc, The Economist, Glamour, and others) and newspapers (The Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and others). She has had several of her stories published in bestselling books and has written for newspapers and magazines.

She received her masters degree with honors in psychology from Pepperdine University, Los Angeles, CA. She conducted research for the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Hospital and research for a forensic psychologist. Martine has had a psychiatric article published in The Journal of Forensic Sciences and presented her own research paper at a national AAFS conference. She also worked as a counselor at Southern California Counseling Center.

She currently runs writing groups for at-risk teenagers and adults.

Hospital care has become hazardous to the patient's health. It's a topic that hits news desks across the country every week. Recently Arizona State University released a shocking study. Their findings, with regards to the number of deaths caused by hospital errors is staggering. Just to get a perspective, the study uses a startling analogy..."if if a jumbo airliner crashed every day, it wouldn't equal the number of deaths in today's hospitals as result of deadly medical errors, medication and surgical mistakes and hospital acquired infectious diseases!" According to The Fifth Annual HealthGrades Patient Safety in American Hospitals Study, 2008, nearly a quarter of a million preventable deaths occur in hospitals nationwide.

These highly publicized and alarming statistics were the basis for Martine Ehrenclou's new book, Critical Condistions: The Essential Hospital Guide To Get Your Loved One Out Alive. Ehrenclou believes that hospital deaths could be prevented if patients had an advocate - a family member, close friend, or someone who can act as a sentinel to prevent medical errors. Patients who receive the wrong drug or the wrong dosage is the leading cause of hospital deaths, and these incidents touch everyone's life at one time or another. America finally faced this growing problem when actor Dennis Quaid brought media attention to the near death of his newborn twins, Thomas and Zoe, after they were given an overdose of the drug heparin.

Critical Conditions is a step-by-step guide to traverse the unfamiliar hospital maize. Based on over 150 interviews with registered nurses, physicians and hospital staff, families, Martine's own experiences with hospitalized family members and hundreds of hours of research. It is a book for family members written by a family member who has been there.

If someone has a parent, spouse, sibling or child in the hospital, they must get actively involved to monitor and oversee the medical care that is provided. Critical Conditions will arm you with helpful facts to:

Prevent deadly medical errors, medication mistakes & infectious diseases.

Reach doctors when you really need them - every time

Be proactive as you oversee your loved one's hospital care

Navigate and manage the hospital system with confidence.

Also, make sure to listen to the return of John Villarreal as he takes on Ron Paul Hunter in an all out brawl, you don't want to miss this.  You may check John and his brother Paul's work at www.youtube.com/user/

PaulFVillarreal and www.villarrealsports.com