Product Description

Comprehensive, logically organized, and now easier to read, this market-leading fundamentals text provides you with up-to-date coverage of nursing principles, concepts, and skills. The book's nursing process framework, critical thinking emphasis, health promotion focus, and thorough coverage of acute and continuing care in all settings help prepare you for nursing practice today. This new edition addresses the increased focus on evidence-based practice and new guidelines for safe patient handling. Plus, a new, cutting-edge chapter on Surviving Cancer helps prepare you to address the unique health care needs of patients who have survived cancer, but still face the physical and emotional after-effects of the illness and its therapy.

• The 5-step nursing process provides a consistent framework for clinical chapters.
• UNIQUE! Critical Thinking in each clinical chapter includes Critical Thinking Models demonstrating the application of the nursing process and critical thinking.
• More than 60 skills are generously illustrated and provide clear, step-by-step instructions for practicing safe nursing care.
• Unexpected Outcomes and Related Interventions for skills alert you to possible problems and appropriate action.
• Procedural Guidelines boxes provide streamlined, step-by-step instructions for performing very basic skills.
• More than 20 care plans demonstrate the application of the 5-step nursing process to individual patient problems to help you understand how a plan is developed and how to evaluate care.
• Clients in the care plan extend to the critical thinking activities at the end of each chapter.
• Over 20 concept maps visually demonstrate planning care for clients with multiple nursing diagnoses.
• Planning sections include sections on Goals and Outcomes, Setting Priorities, and Collaborative Care to help you plan and prioritize comprehensive client care.
• Implementation sections include health promotion, acute care, and continuing care to prepare you for all levels of care in all settings.
• UNIQUE! Safety Alerts provide information and techniques to ensure client and nurse safety based on The Joint Commission's list of National Patient Safety Goals.
• Cultural Aspect of Care boxes summarize cultural considerations related to the chapter topic and provide practical guidelines for how to meet clients' cultural needs and preferences.
• Client Teaching boxes help you plan effective teaching by first identifying outcomes, then developing strategies on how to teach, and, finally, implementing measures to evaluate learning.
• Focus on Older Adult boxes highlight key aspects of nursing assessment and care for this population.
• Key concepts neatly summarize the most important content for each chapter to help you review and evaluate learning.

• UNIQUE! An ESL/Readability specialist has edited each chapter to streamline the text and improve readability.
• UNIQUE! Companion CD, included with the text, provides you with interactive learning activities, searchable audio glossary, Spanish/English audio glossary, Butterfield's Fluids & Electrolytes Tutorial, test-taking skills, and NCLEX® exam-style review questions.
• UNIQUE! Evidence Based Practice boxes summarize the results of a research study and describe the difference the study has made in nursing practice.
• Evidence-Based Practice chapter helps you understand how nursing research serves as the basis for determining best practice, and the critical importance of this continually evolving dynamic.
• UNIQUE! Surviving Cancer chapter prepares you to address the unique health care needs of patients who have survived cancer, but still face the physical and emotional after-effects of the illness and its therapy.
• NCLEX® examination-style review questions for each chapter include new alternate-item format questions, as well as rationales for all answer choices.
• Delegation coverage is enhanced, noting which skills can and cannot be delegated, and indicating related tasks that should be delegated. To help you apply this information, many chapters incorporate delegation considerations into the chapter case study and address them in the critical thinking and NCLEX® exam-style review questions.
• Nursing Assessment Questions boxes help you learn to effectively phrase questions for clients.
• Expanded coverage of informatics familiarizes you with the use of information technology in documenting care and researching best practices.
• UNIQUE! Critical Thinking in Practice sections at the end of each chapter provide questions that require you to apply knowledge, often to the case study detailed in the chapter's care plan.
• New Safe Patient Handling Guidelines are included in the Safety chapter.
• NOC outcomes, as well as NIC interventions, are incorporated in care plans to reflect the standard used by institutions nationwide.
• Key terms are conveniently placed at the beginning of each chapter and include page references where definitions can be found.
• The companion Evolve website offers free downloadable skills video clips and audio chapter summaries.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #18406 in Books
• Published on: 2008-03-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 1520 pages

Customer Reviews

Full of Errors
LIFE AND DEATH
"Nursing Fundamentals" can be a matter of life and death. So its scary that every time I pick up the book I find errors.

PEER CONSENSUS
There is a consensus between all my classmates that information from this book cannot be trusted. The "NCLEX-Style Review Question Answer Key" (page 1440) is so inaccurate that our instructors had to correct it and give us the corrected version as a handout.

QUICK EXAMPLES

* Page 49 Table 4-1
Benner and Wrubel are "Brenner and Wrubel" here.

* Page 743 Table 35-10
In the first footnote in this box. "* Regular insulin is the only insulin for intravenous use...action is between 30 and 30 minutes." Really, "between 30 and 30"; this makes me question the other information I spend all day studying.

think twice
there's so many things wrong with this new edition. (answers are different if you compare this ed to the 6th, some text missing, and no rationale in the back to explain the answers!) the 6th ed is better with rationales in the back along with answers. even my professor contacted the publisher and informed them of the problems with this edition and was told that they're going to provide us with a CD of the textbook. what a waste of my money on this textbook if it's not even usable!!! i have the 6th edition and it's much better!

Difficult to read and follow, especially theory sections
I am using this book for my nursing program as a required text. During and after reading each chapter, I find myself not being able to completely understand many of the distinctions between various ideas or functions, and so I am left without a comfortable grasp of some (not all) of the information. Subsequent re-readings of the material often results in minor improvement as expected, but the way the book is written makes it difficult to glean some (not all) of the important concepts, and there are multiple statements and ideas that re-readings ad nauseum cannot clarify adequately.

The text has a massive quantity of filler (more than any other textbook I have come across thus far), and it is very challenging to sift through it and find what's valuable (the who, what, when, where, why, how, what is it for and what does it do). The large amount of filler - including but not limited to extremely redundant or "duh" statements such as, "Critical thinking is involved with evidence-based practice," and, "Evidenced-based practice requires critical thinking" - also makes each chapter take much longer to read through. Even when you wade through the massive slough of filler and find the valuable information, it is often incomplete, improperly explained, or too ambiguous to completely grasp without divine intervention.

Some sentences have far too much data or too many listed items to comfortably read. There are many sentences that are hard to read and derive anything from simply because they are poorly written. The book has many complex or vague ideas and statements (sometimes using jargon, other times using a poor choice of words or unclear idea expression) and does not adequately clarify or explain what is meant, leaving the reader with an inadequate or incorrect understanding of whatever the book is attempting to convey.

I am disappointed that the answers section for the nclex questions do not have any rationale included, nor do the critical thinking questions have any answers available for review. The lack of thorough feedback does not facilitate learning.

Overall, I feel that the material does not give the reader an adequate or clear understanding of many concepts necessary to answer critical thinking questions like those used by my instructors. The main problem is that the important information is often written poorly, and the secondary problem is the excess filler doubles or triples the time it takes to read, without giving any more useful information than would be present without the filler.

I have several other books I am currently reading for nursing coursework, including Ackley's nursing diagnosis, Jarvis' health assessment, and Kee's phamacology, and they are all much more succinct and clear. They are easier and more enjoyable (or tolerable, whichever you prefer) to read. It is far easier to gather information from them, and it takes less time to get it. These other books are being used for the nursing coursework as well, so I don't believe I can attribute the difficulty of reading Fundamentals of Nursing to a "higher level of reading" like my lecture instructor says. It's not more advanced, it's just harder and less productive. If any of the authors of those other books took a stab at a nursing fundamentals book, it would be half the size, contain much more useful information, and be infinitely easier and more productive to read.

The companion CD is of limited value and only serves benefit for the mentioned info such as electrolyte information. It does not provide a computer-based version of the book, and most of the learning aids for specific chapter information are very truncated and almost useless. The online resource, however, is generally useful, but does not adequately make up for the book's flaws.

I don't care about typos as long as I can interpret the idea of the statement clearly. The book has plenty of typos (more than usual), but that is insignificant compared to how poorly the chapters are written.

Is the book the worst book in the world? No. Is it impossible to read? No. Is it bad for a textbook? I think so. Is it worse than any other textbook I have read in the past 2.5 years of college? Yes. Do I have a choice in what material I am assigned for the program? If I did, I wouldn't choose this book.