ACCCN’S Critical Care Nursing 3e
Leanne Aitken, RN, PhD, BHSc (Nurs) Hons, GCertMgt, GDipScMed (ClinEpi), FACCCN, FACN, FAAN, Life Member-ACCCN
Andrea Marshall, RN, PhD, MN (Research), BN, Grad Cert Ed Studies (Higher Ed), IC Cert , FACCCN, FACN, Life Member-ACCCN
Wendy Chaboyer, RN, PhD, MN, BSc (Nu) Hons, Crit Care Cert, FACCCN, Life Member-ACCCN
Elsevier
Sydney 2015
ISBN : 9780729542005
Type and Scope of book
This Critical care nursing textbook is written by the Australian College of Critical Care Nurses. This is the peak professional body and governs the standards of practice in Australia. This book delivers these peak professional standards to the books readership.
The book has 3 sections. Section 1 focusing on the profession. Sections 2 and 3 focusing on clinical practice. It is a comprehensive intensive care textbook that is a industry leader in it’s educational provision to novice students, learning practitioners and experienced experts.
The largest part of the book concentrates on respiratory and cardiovascular assessment and management. This focus is the educational centre piece of the book. Other major intensive care topics are examined after this was major focus was addressed.
Contents
Section 1
Scope of Practice (5 chapters)
Section 2
Principles and practice of critical care (17 chapters)
Section 3
Speciality Practice (7 Chapters)
Strengths
The text has been written and edited to ease the work of reading. The sentence structure is clear and precise. The language is the language of a intensive care unit in Australia. This makes it easy to comprehend for the Australian reader.
The use of experts and research from the world of intensive care highlights the importance of the book. Their writing styles are edited and homogenised to give all chapters a similar flow of style for the reader to gain information.
The textbook offers many comprehensive chapters that cover the wide range of the physiological dysfunctions that need to be corrected in a intensive care patient. In clinical practice intensive care patients have these wide variety of dysfunction so the textbook matches reality.
Many of the chapters use pictures and drawings to add to knowledge presented in the text. These are able to show the visual reality of the text. This in particularly with ECG’s, haemodynamic and intracranial pressure and ventilation waves.
The textbook uses many tables in conjunction with the text to explain concepts. This was a highlight of the textbook. The ability of the table to allow cross referencing of values and information in a clear format. The text information supports and describes this further giving clarity.
The references and statistics are in a Australian context. This gives local meaning of day to day reality for the intended readership. The use of local practice protocols and guidelines are valuable for Australian intensive care nurses to reach the desired high gold standards of care.
Practice tips were very helpful. This is needed for this emergency nurse reviewer who is not a expert in intensive care nursing. Each chapter provided has a excellent evaluation section that allowed the information to be reinforced.
The amount of calculations used in intensive care nursing are many. The textbook covers many essential calculations to the relevant ventilation, drug, nutritional and output values and data needed in clinical practice. Normal and abnormal blood levels are covered well in the tables and texts throughout.
This emergency nurse reviewer wanted the answers to 2 clinical problems when opening this textbook. To answer my questions advanced ventilation tips for patients that needed greater pressure and change of respiratory patterns. Secondly on enteral and calorie support for trauma patients. This textbook improved my knowledge on both subjects but I needed to read further articles to gain the knowledge I was seeking.
The binder two tone colour code for ease of chapter referencing was very useful. The reader can easily flick through the book to find the correct section and chapter.
Weaknesses
Surprisingly cardiovascular assessment, monitoring and management was in the textbook before respiratory assessment, monitoring and management. Both groups of relevant chapters had equal complexity. This sort made the rest of the textbooks order a bit random too.
More pictures could have been included in many chapters. A instructional DVD/CD ROM may add to the colour of the book and information in the text. Intensive care uses a lot of equipment. Images of these set ups and subsequent use of would be a excellent form of further education.
Recommended Readership
All intensive care nursing staff will need this book in their library. This allows access to the standards expected of high quality intensive care nursing in Australia.
The textbook would make for a great reference book for a emergency department. This reviewer liked the ventilation section and methods. The explanation of using rise time, inspiratory to expiratory ratio’s and flow patterns to use on patients with altered pathology and physiology gave this complex concept clarity.
Overall Rating
An excellent book that sets the gold standards in intensive care nursing in Australia. Detailed knowledge of the contents of this textbook is necessary for a nurse to progress to become a expert in the field of intensive care. A fantastic 3rd edition from the Australian College of Critical Care Nurses.