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35 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Extremely tedious read, September 22, 2007
I am a first year nursing student, and this book is in use for my institutions "Nursing Across the Life Span" course. At first glance, I thought that this would be a comprehensive examination of health promotion. However, I have found it to be extremely tedious to read. The authors don't seem to know the meaning of the word "paraphrase", and write some incredibly convoluted explanations for what should be very simple concepts. I am already college educated, and did well in college. Yet, as I read this book, I found myself stopping to say "Huh?" Often, the definitions and explanations are direct quotes from other sources and they are nearly always convoluted and difficult. In short, I hate this book and find it quite a chore to have to read. It's page after page of tedium, and it doesn't have to be that way. Additionally, this book is terrible when it comes to defining important terms. True, it depicts important terms in bold print but often does not provide an in-text definition. Rather, I found myself having to stop and flip to the glossary in order to located the definiton. I don't like having to interrupt the flow of reading, and the way the book was written necessitated that. Several in my class have the same problem with this textbook, and we have asked the instructor to consider changing the text for next years class. This is a topic area that nurses absolutely need to understand, and it could be a very interesting topic. This text, however, does a poor job of presenting it. It's simply too convoluted and tedious to read. It isn't student friendly in the least, and I would not recommend it to anyone in its current form.
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19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
This Book is Worst than Illness, October 1, 2007
I found this to be the worst text book I have ever had to read, the test questions it offers, are based on one sentence out of each chapter rather than concepts.
It has no underlying themes rather than any one of an ethnic minority
MUST have poor health which is of itself racist and discriminating. I would completely disagree by saying that I know plenty of healthy people who are of minority statuses.
The book is extremely boring to read and I agree with the first review, it just very repetetive and does not explain any concept in its own words.
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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Worst Textbook Ever, November 5, 2008
This book is required for my Community Nursing course. I have completed more than half the book and am doing well in the class - but not due to actually having read it. To learn anything from this book takes mental acrobatics - seriously.
The organization seems well-defined, but the actual writing is so poorly executed that reading it is slow torture. The authors use as many words as possible to define every concept, turning what should be simple definitions into paragraph long sentences. The chapters drone on and on, making it nearly impossible to simply sit, read and gain an understanding of community health.
Each chapter takes you through Gordon's Functional Health Patterns to demonstrate how at every stage of life countless influences affect a person's health. Rather than taking a internal locus of control approach to health promotion, the book sees individuals as victims of life with little hope of overcoming all the obstacles to good health. As a previous reader noted, there is an overabundance of relying on government programs to ensure personal health.
But the book actually goes beyond describing individuals as helpless and actually characterizes individuals of low social-economic status in ways that can only be described as stupid. For example, in the chapter on infancy, a description of the risks for homeless infants is that they will not have cribs or be held. No explanation of why poor parents will not hold their children, no citation of research on parenting styles of homeless (or even poor) parents. Just the assumption that if you are poor you don't hold your baby. When I showed some of my concerns to my clinical adviser she was actually offended at how ridiculously inept the book claims individuals are simply because they are poor.
Very little useful information is offered, and what is is poorly researched. Citations are few and far between leaving me only to assume most of the information in this book is the opinion of the authors and should not be used for evidence-based practice.
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