Customer Reviews

Medical-Surgical Nursing:Clinical Management of Positive Outcomes

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I love this textbook! I have only one quarter left until I graduate with an associate's degree in nursing and I needed a textbook that would help me start thinking like a nurse and not just a student trying to pass a test. At my college we used a different textbook that I found confusing and unhelpful. I really wanted and needed a textbook that would help me develop critical thinking skills, not just skills to answer NCLEX-style questions.

Here is what I like about this textbook:

1. There aren't alot of fussy break-out boxes and tables that clutter up the pages. I get distracted very easily, and if there are alot of tables on a page, it is hard for me to stay focused on the text. This book does have tables, boxes and illustrations, but they are simple and easy to comprehend. I found with the other textbook I would get overwhelmed with all the detail and anxious about trying to memorize everything. I feel alot better with this textbook, because it seems to get you focused on what you need to know to practice nursing.

2.The text of this book seems to go from general principals to more specific. For example, the general assessment, pre-op and post op care, and diagnostic tests are described for a body system before the book gets into the specific details of various conditions are discussed. This has helped me to get a big picture and see commonalities for the nursing care before getting into finer details that are disease and condition specific.

3. This textbook give a lot of valuable information. It does try to give the rationales to help you understand why you are doing something. For example, a sign and symptom of hyperkalemia is oliguria or anuria. But, this books goes further to state that oliguria and anuria are often precursors to hyperkalemia and not a result of hyperkalemia. If your kidney can't make urine to excrete potassium, you will get a build up of potassium in the system. This kind of explanation helped me to easily understand and memorize the symptoms of hyperkalemia. I like having the reason described so that I am not left to just memorize without understanding.

4. This textbook also tries to teach you how to delegate to nursing assistants. Before I bought the textbook, I went to the publisher's website and they had a web page devoted to advertising this book. There, the author described that they also looked at how nurses are more and more being pulled into court to defend their nursing care. They looked at areas where nurses are most often involved in litigation, and tried to include teaching about these areas to help furture nurses not get pulled into court. So, throughout the book are boxes that describe delegation issues to help you know what you can and cannot delegate, and what instruction you need to give to people you delegate a task.

5. THis book has critical thinking exercises at the end of most of the chapters. Just doing a few of these exercises has already helped me feel more confident about what I need to do as a nurse with patients in my care. My problem with my other textbook was it just had a few NCLEX questions at the end of a chapter. But, my anxiety was that when you have a real patient, you're not going to be given a list of four things to choose from like you will on a NCLEX test. This textbook has a companion cd and a website where you can go to find a discussion of the critical thinking exercises so you are not left hanging wondering if you came up with a good answer.

Lastly, this textbook comes in a 2-volume set, and I would recommend getting that instead of the single volume. It is a HUGE book, so it is nice to have it broken down into 2 smaller texts that are a more manageable size.

This book is big and bulky indeed but it is very much worth reading. I am in my second semester of a BSN accelerated program and reading this book really helps reinforce the ideas and information presented in lecture. It is not dry because it lays out the information in a readable, bearable, tolerable way. It talks about a certain topic, for example, Oncology, it explains the different procedures, what they are, and then it incorporates the important nursing care for clients with cancer, whether they be pre-, intra-, or post- operative. This book gets you to think critically about the needs of your client which is what nursing school emphasizes on, as well as of course knowing your material. I didn't think I'd like reading this book but I have been reading it alongside my powerpoint lectures to compare and add anything else that was not clear during lecture and it has helped me A LOT! We just had our first exam last week and I am off to a good start! DON'T FORGET to check out the Online Resource as well as the CD that came with it. Those are VERY helpful too!

As a nursing student, this was a required text book for my courses. The information contained is very in-depth and informative, but it is a very tough, and at times impossible read for those with limited or no previous medical background. The book comes either as one single book, or in two volumes. Ordering from Amazon.com, I was able to get it in the two- volume version, whereas my classmates are stuck carrying a 2500+ page book with them to their classes every day.

Very pleased with this resource. It surprisingly is a decent read. The material it entails will never be a "fun" read; however, it is quite easy to read the material. Would definitely recommend purchasing it in two books rather than the larger one. The two halves themselves are bulky and I could not imagine carrying the bulky one along with my other belongings. A great resource and plan to keep it for years to come. Recommended.

Our nursing school recently switched over from Iggy Medical Surgical Nursing to Black. I started using Black and instantly hated it. It tired giving it a chance. I actually have been comparing both books for 3 months now with the assigned readings for class. I think it is very disorganized, and sometimes inaccurate. The pathophysiology is lacking and the nursing diagnoses don't always follow ADPIE as well as Iggy did. I often find things in the text that contraindicate previous things stated. I also find all of blue and red geni lamps that are inserted into the middle of the text to be a distraction, a waste of ink, and a waste of space...which is essentially a burden on my back and on my eyes...all for a point of reference. Black will touch on a topic, and won't go in depth and will miss important things that I believe a nurse should know. All around, I think Black is a non user friendly book and a chaotic mess. I spend more time interpreting or deciphering the text than I do learning. The diagrams and pictures are often unrelated to the text and do not help me at all.

This book was too wordy and not an easy read. Made things more confussing. Also, "Fundamentals of Nursing" had all the same information, and a much better read

I use the book all of the time for clinical reviews. Great to have on hand to look up any diagnoses.

My book arrived before the stated time which was excellent. I had a problem with one of the books as it was not what I ordered so I contacted the seller pmpfabo777 who was not helpful at all and they just brushed me off. What goes around comes around. The books I got from the other sellers were exactly what I ordered and I am satisfied with my purchases from them.

This book has many problems, but the biggest one is organization. Rather than explaining each topic individually in a systematic manner, they will take an entire topic such as "renal" and then jump around from topic to topic within renal in different sections. For instance, they will explain "pathophysiology" and include both acute renal failure and then explain chronic. Then they will go to "pharmacology" and explain acute and then chronic. Then they will go to "nursing diagnoses" for both of them together, rather than explain each topic individually. The result is that someone who is not familiar with the subject (i.e., most beginning rn students) will become very mixed up a confused, as well as not having a clear idea about what information is important vs what is "fluff".

The online program that comes with the book is just awful. Technical support will keep you on the phone for hours and there are many problems to call them about. The test keys are wrong, case studies fail to appear, students would get locked out periodically for no reason. All of which can be very frustrating especially if you are doing the assignments for a grade.

I would never recommend to any one in any circumstances to buy this book. In fact I think reading it at all will only serve to confuse you even more.

This book came delivered to me as one volume. It is being sold in my university's book store as two separate volumes because it is so large. I was a little disappointed when I received it as one book because I feel it is going to break easier. Just be aware that this book is over 2000 pages long and the spine is not strong enough to hold them all in place. Otherwise, the book is great.