Customer Reviews

Paediatrics and Child Health

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Three major strengths of this book-

1: Thoughtful, clear structure makes it a joy to read. You get a sense of continuity and development as you read through the book and come away with a good overview of the subject as a whole.

2: Organisation of book adds to the clarity of the text through coherent use of colour-coding for chapters and sections, useful summary boxes, key points, superb diagrams and illustrations, especially the 'stick-man'.

3: Self-test questions at the end of each chapter. Questions highlight any lapses in your understanding by emphasising ambiguities and complexities of topic.

The fine presentation and content make this an enjoyable read. You get used to the style of the book and know where to find information you are looking for. Spider diagrams at start of each section introduces each topic to you so that you know exactly what to expect. Plenty of key definitions make sure that nothing goes amiss in your understanding. Occasional mnemonic allows you to make sense of all the detail.

Authors encourage you to think around subject by referring to earlier and later sections in book. They point out common pitfalls, such as ordering unnecessary tests. They are particularly helpful when going over more complicated concepts by logically building up to and summarising them. Authors give valuable comments and tips for practice.

I stumbled on this text via google search and found myself reading everything that I could in the online preview - which was quite a bit of the book actually.

What finally sold me on getting a copy was the excellent illustrations and simple, straightforward writing.

I was easily able to see what my child should be doing, where he was in his development milestones and there is a great deal of information on how to deal with various illnesses your child may encounter - especially easing my mind over which ones to worry about and which ones could be dealt with at a more casual pace.

Since it is written as a text for new pediatricians, you will have a good idea what to expect when you visit your child's doctor and you can ask better questions and better understand what is happening.

It is expensive, and I haven't played with the CD-ROM yet (It sounds like a "test the reader" excercise, rather than a digitized text based on the description in the book) but this is the kind of book you will reference well into your child's teen years when it comes to health issues.

You could easily find all of the info in this book on the internet, but this book condenses it into one place, with a consistent format and it is well written and the illustrations are helpful and easy to understand.

It also has growth charts and you can track your child easily to see if head size, height and weight are within the norms. It also tells you what can cause a child to be outside the norms.

One other note, as you might have guessed by the spelling, it is British. Diapers are called "nappys" and there are "odd" spellings here and there. But we haven't had any problem with this.