Book excerpt: Calling 911 in an emergency may be the most important thing you ever do. However, it is only one tool to get you and yours through a medical emergency. This guide lays out a smarter process to improve the odds that you and your charge(s) have successful outcomes (i.e., survive) when going through a medical emergency. That means getting yourself, your family, your charges, your home, and your environment ready for a medical emergency. You need to make your home and environment "responder ready." You need to learn how to give critical aid that keeps your charge stable until professional help arrives. You need to know how to get responders to your charge quickly and be as helpful to them as you can while they are there. It's also important to know how to get prompt care at - and "work" - a hospital emergency department. Finally, you need to plan for and get through the recovery process with your charge and take care of yourself, too. That includes learning from the experience so you can improve what you know and better handle things the next time. It also includes assessing the emergency's impact on you, the caregiver, so that you can successfully recover yourself.