Customer Reviews

2005 Intravenous Medications : A Handbook for Nurses and Allied Health Professionals

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This book tremendously helped me in my clinical experience when I was a student 5 years ago. This book was also a great resource during my practice in the stepdown unit where I worked. This book contains more than 350 IV drug monographs, the information is very coherent and comprehensive. This book has been published for more than thirty years and has undergone more than twenty one editions. It has good presentation of information, i.e. in terms of readability (very user-friendly), relevance to the nursing practice, and reliability of the data (you can cross reference the sources-there is a list at the beginning of the book).

The drugs are arranged alphabetically, but you can also search the index, this saves time. Each drug entry lists its generic name, the primary category and its indication for use.It also includes the pH of the IV drug. Each drug monograph has entries for usual dose, pediatric dose, infant/neonatal dose, dose adjustments, dilution (this entry describes how the diluted drug would look like, cloudy or clear?), information about use and size of filters, compatibilities, incompatibilities, rate of administaration, actions of drugs, indication of use, contraindication, precaution(which is very extensive but concise-think patient safety), things to monitor, patient education, maternal child FDA specifics, elderly specifics, drug/lab interactions, side effects, and MOST IMPORTANT is the ANTIDOTE section. This section is a lifesaver...and that is an understatement.

Unlike other drug books, this book also contains important guidelines for drug administration/dosing, e.g. heparin...and alerts you of the necessary tasks to do like draw blood samples at such and such intervals which serves as an adjunct to hospital protocols and serves as a quick reference.

The presentation of these monographs is prose like...very easy to read. My only reservation is that the book is spiral bound, and if you are not careful, the pages can easily rip from the binder :(

I hope this review is helpful.