ISBN9780323025867

I am an honors student and hold a PhD in a related health care field. This book is the worst piece of garbage I have encountered in my entire academic career. It is wordy, convoluted, and makes concepts/procedures more difficult than they actually are. I cannot believe any nursing program would inflict this book on their students. What's even worse, is that in Canada, this text is the standard used for the nursing board exams. I too, would rate it a "zero" if I could.

This book is written in an easy to read style, however, it is very repetitive. Each chapter is divided into 2 sections. The first section is very detailed and covers the definitions and terminology. The second half of the chapter repeats what was written in the first half of the chapter except that it is broken down into the nursing process.

The nursing process consists of an assessment, the nursing diagnosis, the planning, the implementation, and finally an evaluation. And throughout the nursing process portion of the chapter, it goes into detail about basic nursing skills pertaining to that chapter. These skills contain a lot of pictures which makes the reading seem less laborious. Terminology and definitions are also scattered throughout the second portion of the chapter as well.

Personally, I don't like the layout of the book. This book is perfect for those who have nothing else better to do but to read. I do believe in reading and studying, however, unfortunately it is just too repetitive for even the most studious.

More or less, if you read the first portion, you shouldn't have to read the second portion and vice versa. The problem is deciding which half to read. The best strategy I have used is going over the terminology throughout the chapter and then just read the portion with the nursing process and skills (the 2nd half).

One last note, a lot of chapters are really just common sense. The chapters over children; over adults; and over the elderly are perfect examples of common sense information that have been written in this book. It's nice to spend time going into detail about the different ages of individuals and their specific needs, but does a student really need to spend time on these things which are already obvious when they could be spending more time learning the skills needed to administer an injection or using safe medication adminstration? It all boils down to time management and deciding which things are really relevant to the student to help he or she be successful.

very hard to study from, like other reviewer said, its too cluttered and it makes it hard to focus on the main points.

I felt compelled to warn others about this book. It is unorganized, combersome, wordy, inaccurate, and talks in circles. Interestingly, Mosby/elsevier published Lewis' med-surg nursing, which is also poorly written. In fact, anything published by Mosby is absolute garbage, including their drug book, nurse aid book, and patho book. Anyway, I read texts often and know a good one from a bad one. This rates a -10.

I was required to use this book my first semester of nursing school and it is absolutely ridiculous. I will bet money that this book was written to weed out nursing students. Way too much clutter in this book as well as boring. If efficient and stimulating learning is your ultimate goal here then is is not your book. TO ANY 1ST SEMESTER STUDENTS OUT THERE: if you really enjoy clinicals and have this book as your intro nursing fundamentals class just stick with it, endure and it gets much better with the med-surg book in the next semesters.